HC Directs Vidarbha Schools to Reopen from June 30 The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Wednesday mandated that schools in Vidarbha, a region in Maharashtra, reopen from June 30, overturning earlier directives from the state education department. The court’s decision came after a prolonged legal battle over the timing of the academic year’s resumption, with the state initially setting June 15 as the reopening date, which was later pushed to June 22. The high court’s intervention followed a writ petition filed by the Maharashtra Rajya Prathamik Shikshan Samiti, a state-level education body, challenging the state’s March 28 circular that had fixed June 15 as the reopening date. The court’s division bench, comprising Justices Anil Kilor and Raj Wakode, dismissed the state’s earlier circulars as arbitrary and warned that any future deviation from the June 30 directive would result in contempt of court proceedings against the involved officials. The bench emphasized that the director of education’s past actions were “contemptuous” but stopped short of initiating contempt proceedings immediately. The court’s order explicitly stated that if the state education department or any official issued conflicting directives in the future, the court would take action under the Contempt of Courts Act. The petitioners, represented by advocate BG Kulkarni, argued that the state’s March 28 circular was inconsistent with a 2007 ruling by the same high court. In that ruling, the court had held that imposing a uniform statewide reopening date for Vidarbha was arbitrary, citing the region’s adverse weather conditions during June, which could negatively impact students’ health. The Supreme Court had later dismissed the state’s appeal against this 2007 decision.#bombay_high_court #vidarbha #maharashtra_rajya_prathamik_shikshan_samiti #maharashtra_education_department #bg_kulkarni
