Schools have been out of bounds for students in the Valley for the past two and a half years but not the seminars lined up by the government to mark the upcoming Republic Day.

The Jammu and Kashmir education department is holding a series of seminars on Atmanirbhar Bharat in the run up to the Republic Day, surprising students and school managements who have been impatiently waiting for the schools to reopen.

The decision to scrap the state’s special status in 2019, which was accompanied by months-long shutdown, had led to the closure of Valley schools. The pandemic beginning in early 2020 had aggravated the problem.

Now, Srinagar’s chief education officer has in an order directed principals and other officials to ensure the participation of students from classes IX to XII in seminars on the “eve of Republic Day”.

Other events such as essay writing and painting competitions will be held offline.

Ghulam Nabi Var, the president of Private Schools’ Association of Jammu and Kashmir, said such orders reflected the dichotomy and contradiction in what the government said or did.

“Education has never been a priority for the government in J&K but politics over education is a priority,” Var told The Telegraph.

“Our schools had shut months before they did in other parts of world (due to a clampdown following the dilution of Article 370). For all these months, we have been urging the government to reopen schools, pledging to follow all protocols but they never heeded our pleas.”

Var said the educational system in the Valley was staring at a disaster because of the government’s reluctance to reopen schools, arguing that online classes had not been a success.

“It has been the slogan of international bodies, including Unicef, that schools should be the last institutions to close and first to open during the pandemic. Only the opposite is true in Kashmir,” he said.

Student leader Nasir Khoehami said the authorities were interested in image perception and not education, claiming Covid-19 restrictions applied to schools but not on tulip gardens or tourism festivals.

Khoehami said he met top government dignitaries over the last several months, pleading to reopen schools.

“The results of online classes are abysmal. Additionally, we all know that the Internet was shut for more than a year after August 2019 and even today you have areas that have no Internet access. Every other day, mostly in South Kashmir, you have encounters during which the Internet is shut in large areas and many students suffer,” he said.

“That is why we have been fighting for offline classes but without any success.”