Kumar Rajiv Nayan
Ara :Coaching institutes have sprung up in Bhojpur district and that too without registration and any infrastructure. Education department has no information about their number and location. Even students have no knowledge about qualification and merit of the teachers teaching in these coaching institutes.
A number of coaching institutes in Ara are running in a cramp room with 100 to 250 students studying there. The Bihar Coaching Institute (Control and Regulation) Act has made it mandatory for all the coaching institutes to maintain basic infrastructure and sufficient space for the students but not a single coaching institute in Bhojpur district meets the requirements.
As per the Bihar Coaching Institute (Control and Regulation) Act, each coaching institute should have a lavatory, pure drinking water, parking space, first aid, fire extinguisher and sufficient space for the students but hardly a coaching institute provides these facilities. The coaching institutes have to display merit and experience of teachers on the board but it is also not done. The Act also makes it mandatory for coaching institutes to register themselves with the education department and their registration is to be renewed every three years but not a single coaching institute has so far been registered. The Act provides for fine ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs. 1 lakh on the recalcitrant coaching institutes but the education Department has no record of these coaching institutes.
Acting District Education Officer (DEO) Sultan Ahmad said that he had no idea about the registration of coaching institutes and added that after thorough review of the Act, the education department will proceed to get all these coaching institutes registered. He said action would be taken against the defaulting coaching institutes and they would be closed. He further said if a coaching institute was registered in the past but does not abide by the rule and regulation of the Act, its registration will be cancelled.
Coaching institute owners, Prem Kumar, Santosh Kumar and Shahnawaz Alam said that provisions of the Act were known to them and they run their coaching institutes as per the Act. But none of them said anything about registration of their coaching institutes.