By Jose Kavi

New Delhi, Feb 5, 2024: The fate of more than 700 students hangs in the air as the authorities in Kashmir have failed to renew the land lease documents of St Joseph Higher Secondary School, the oldest Catholic educational institution in the union territory.

“We feel helpless,” bemoans Father Shaiju Chacko, the Public Relations Officer of Jammu-Srinagar diocese that manages the 119-year-old school in Baramulla town, some 60 km west of Srinagar, capital of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

The priest, who is also the secretary of the diocese’s education society, told Matters India February 5 that the school is the oldest Catholic educational institutions in the region that now has more than 3,000 students from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

Among them, 700 are in grades nine to twelve who require registration by the government education department to appear for public examinations.

A Statutory Order (SO) from the union territory’s education department in April 2023 and subsequent order of the Board of School Education refrained the affiliation and registration of students of private schools operating on government lease land.

A hospital managed by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary also stands on the leased land.

The Baramulla school was set up in 1905 on a land leased in the 19th century during the reign of Kashmir’s Maharaja Pratap Singh. When the lease expired in 2018, the school authorities approached concerned authorities but received no response, Father Chacko explained.

Since the government is not renewing the land lease, the Board of School Education has refused to register the Catholic school’s students for board examinations because of the absence of land lease documents.

“We brought the matter to the attention of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who was the chief guest of our last Christmas program. He immediately asked the revenue and education departments to take necessary action,” the priest said.

As no action has been taken so far, the diocesan authorities plan to approach the governor again.

The school was founded by the Mill Hill Fathers or Mill Hill Missionaries from London in 1903. After them, the Jesuits of Delhi province managed it for some time until the diocese took it over.

The oldest Christian school in Kashmir is Tyndale Biscoe School, managed by the Church of North India in the Sheikh Bagh in the Lal Chowk area of Srinagar.

It was founded in 1880, as the second school in Jammu and Kashmir. It was named after Canon Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe, a British missionary and educationist who worked in Kashmir.

The first school in the region was Sri Pratap Higher Secondary, set up in 1874.