Srinagar: Two years after the announcement, the School Education department has failed to set up special boarding schools for each district in Kashmir even as required land has been identified at many places.
Conceived on the pattern of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) schools, the department had in December 2017 asked the Chief Education Officers to identify at least 50 kanals of land for schools in their respective districts.
The proposed schools were supposed to be “first of its kind” institutions providing career counseling to students from elementary level and were supposed to have provision for co-education.
However, two years down the line, not a single school has come up even as the required land had been identified for several of them.
In south Kashmir’s Shopian district, officials had identified 28 kanals of land at Sedav area of the district last year, but the school is yet to come up, an official told Kashmir Reader.
Same is the case with Pulwama district where land for the boarding school in the district had been identified at Chandgam area.
“There has been no progress after the identification of the land,” an official said.
In north Kashmir’s Baramulla district also, officials had identified 30-40 kanals of land at Hail Jageer in Sangrama constituency of the district.
An official said that there had been “no development from the department’s side” since then.
In Srinagar district, 20 kanals of land had been identified for the special boarding school at Sonwar a few months back, as per an official.
A top official in the School Education Department told Kashmir Reader that the identified land for the proposed schools was “insufficient” as per government of India norms.
Each of the schools, the official said, required “at least 241 kanals of land”.
He said that the department was pursuing the proposal.

Irshad Khan