NEW DELHI: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday questioned Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren of giving Fridays off in schools, a decision reversed by the JMM government in 2022.
“I want to ask Hemant Soren, if you close schools on Fridays for them, then why not close schools on Tuesdays for our children to pray to Lord Hanuman?” Sarma said at a poll rally in Dumka, Jharkhand.
In 2020, 43 state-run schools in Jamtara district, a minority dominated area, had switched their weekly holiday from Sunday to Friday, a move which was later dismissed to reinstate Sunday as the official day off.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had used similar rhetoric of attacking the opposition on communal grounds also accused the JMM government of changing weekly offs from Sunday to Friday in an effort to “fight” with the Christians.
“First they fought with the Hindus community and now the Christians. What is going on,” he had claimed.
The Jharkhand administration had, in 2022, dissolved the committees who had decided to change weekly offs to Friday.
“The committees were dissolved after investigations carried out by myself and block education officers revealed that some schools in the minority community-dominated pockets of Jamtara district had switched to Friday as their weekly off for over two years now,” Jamtara district education officer (DEO) Abhay Shankar had said.