20,000 Telangana Students Send Postcards to High Court Over School Infrastructure

Around 20,000 students from government schools across Telangana have written handwritten postcards to the Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court in Hyderabad, drawing attention to a severe shortage of teachers and poor basic infrastructure in their institutions.

Representatives of multiple public organisations on Tuesday urged the High Court to take suo motu cognisance of the postcards and treat the issue as a public interest litigation. The groups sought specific judicial directions to the state government to recruit teachers for vacant posts, construct additional classrooms, and upgrade facilities across all state-run schools.

Campaigners stated that primary and high school students penned the postcards as part of an initiative to highlight their constitutional right to education under Article 21A. According to organisers, numerous schools currently operate without adequate teaching staff, leaving classrooms empty and harming the standard of learning.

Speaking to the media, Ravi Prakash Mayreddy of the Dial Your Village initiative, Yadma Madhava Reddy of the Vandemataram Foundation, Sai Kumar of the MV Foundation, and Dileep Reddy of People’s Pulse pointed out widespread deficiencies. They noted that several government schools lack safe drinking water, separate toilets for boys and girls, science laboratories, libraries, playgrounds, and sports equipment.

Students also shared their individual hardships. One student, Shravani, said her school lacks sufficient classrooms, clean drinking water, and computers. Another student, Vaishnavi from Guavvaladinne village, said she must walk 4 kilometres to school in Nandini mandal and 4 kilometres back each day due to a lack of bus connectivity, adding that travel difficulties have led some fellow students to drop out.

The participating organisations called upon the Telangana state government, the Education Department, and the Telangana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights to intervene promptly. They stressed that infrastructure and staffing upgrades must be extended to all government schools throughout the state, rather than being limited to integrated schools and Telangana Public Schools.