PANJIM The Archdiocesan Board of Education (ABE) has tangled itself further in a mess with confusing statements on the meeting with Catholic MLAs. While it claims the move to call for a meeting was essentially to discuss “education” issues, it also says that they “have no right to call MLAs of other communities”.
ABE on Tuesday defended its move to call for a meeting of Catholic MLAs to press for its demand before the state government claiming that “it was not wrong to call its community members”.
“We have no right to call all MLAs or MLAs of the other communities. We have called the Catholic MLAs because they are the members of our community. Is there anything wrong here if we wanted to share our concerns with them?” questioned ABE Secretary Sr Annie Paul in a statement issued to the media.
Sr Annie’s statement comes despite ABE clarifying that their educational institutions cater to students where more than 50 percent and sometimes even 75 percent and in some case 95 percent students are of other communities, including the majority community.
“We never meant nor do we mean to communalize in any way, because the issues shared with them were only of educational nature and specifically with regard to the permissions to open new schools and nothing else,” she said.
Some BJP, Congress and independent legislators had participated in the ABE meeting on June 10 pressing for various pending demands before the government. A memorandum was also submitted to Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar seeking that the demands of new higher secondary schools and new divisions in primary schools be fulfilled.
The BJP high command had later pulled up its legislator for the lobbying and non-Catholic legislators were upset with the ABE move.
The ABE secretary clarified that this is not the first time they have invited Catholic MLAs, as in the past too they were called, more than once, to spend some time together. “In fact they had felt that we need to come together more often,” she added.
ABE has certain issues pending with the government, inter alia, permissions to open new higher secondary schools, primary school, secondary school and others. “All the schools applied for are situated in remote areas and not in the cities. ABE followed the required process and exhausted all possible means to obtain the required permissions,” Sr Annie said and said that despite reopening of the school, the permissions were not granted leaving the parents confused and concerned.
“Hence we decided to invite the Catholic MLAs just to share our concerns with them,” she added
