BMC has classrooms for Pawar’s trust, not for autistic children

While the municipal corporation was quick to lease out 18 classrooms of a civic-owned building to Pawar Public School, it turned down a charitable trust’s repeated requests to allot classrooms to its school for autistic children. Bhavika Jain reports.

While the municipal corporation was quick to lease out 18 classrooms of a civic-owned building to Pawar Public School, it turned down a charitable trust’s repeated requests to allot classrooms to its school for autistic children.

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In 2009, Kalyani Charitable Trust, a private trust from Ghatkopar, wrote to the civic education officer requesting him to provide four classrooms of a civic school at Varsha Nagar in Vikhroli to their school for autistic children.

They even attached attested recommendation letters of the local corporator, member of legislative assembly and member of Parliament.

But, the civic education department turned down the request saying that there is no fixed policy on providing vacant classrooms in civic schools to outside institutes. Since then, the trust has made several requests — recent being in May.

Taking cognisance of the issue, civic improvements committee chairman Bhalchandra Shirsat on Tuesday wrote to municipal commissioner Subodh Kumar, asking him to look into the matter “as keenly as he did for the Pawar Public School issue”.

An upset Shirsat said: “There are very few organisations in the city that run schools for autistic children. The BMC is giving special privileges to the Pawar Public School trust and being unfair to genuine cases.”

Civic education officer Abasaheb Jadhav was unavailable for comment on the issue.