Rejecting the Cantonment Board’s (CB) report on the closure of schools in the areas under the military control, the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday directed the Board to submit a fresh report in four weeks, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Ijazul Ahsan, is hearing the petition filed against the closure of schools in the country’s cantonments.   

Addressing the counsel for the CB, Justice Muneeb Akhtar said all the public notices you had attached to the report dated back to 2021. “Where are those of the preceding years, 2019 and 2020?” he asked. 

The counsel replied that he had all these notices published in different newspapers for the schools’ closure, and it was only for the court’s convenience that only those dating back to 2021 had been attached. 

Directing the CB’s lawyer to submit all the notices, the court adjourned hearing of the petition for four weeks.

On January 5, 2022, 24News had reported that the SC had barred the cantonment boards across the country from sealing private schools.

During the hearing of petitions filed against the closure of private schools in the country’s cantonments, Qalbe Hassan Shah, counsel for these schools, said there were 8, 300 schools in the cantonments in which 3.7 million students were enrolled. “Now when these schools are being sealed, the question is where will the children studying in them go?” he said, and argued that the apex court had not listened to the private schools’ owners’ point of view prior to giving its last decision.  

Hamid Khan, representing the students’ parents in the case, said the real bone of contention was building schools on residential plots. 

Reporter Amanat Gishkori