Chandigarh: Nearly four decades after the first promise of a Sainik School in Matanhail, a small town in Jhajjar district, the long-pending project now took a different turn. The Haryana govt has now decided to establish a Rashtriya Military School (RMS) in Matanhail under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode, instead of the proposed third Sainik School in the state.The demand for a Sainik School in Matanhail dated back to 1987, when then chief minister Devi Lal first announced the project. In 2003, the proposal gained momentum when the then defence minister George Fernandes laid the foundation stone, while the village also offered around 300 acres of land for the institution. However, the project failed to materialise over the years. On Monday, Haryana minister Rao Narbir Singh said that an RMS will be established in Matanhail, for which the village panchayat is yet to approve the release of 61 acres of land. The minister also clarified that earlier a total of 300 acres of land was proposed to be utilised for the school, but on account of some legal hurdles, only around 61 acres of village land can be provided for the school. The minister also accepted that the matter of establishing a Sainik School in Matanhail is pending since 1987, when the former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal first announced the plan, considering the large number of soldiers in the armed forces from the area. Since then, only correspondence between the state govt and the Union govt went on.Even during the 10 years of the Congress regime, the former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda also wrote several times to the Union govt for establishing the school, but nothing materialised. Former CM Manohar Lal Khattar also wrote to the Centre during his more than 9 years regime for establishing the school, but to no avail.Senior Congress leader and former minister Geeta Bhukal took up the matter in the state assembly during the ongoing budget session. She, however, informed that the village panchayat passed a resolution twice in Feb 2021 and 2026 to donate 61 acres of land for the school, and demanded swift action on the part of the govt to establish the school. Senior minister Arvind Sharma also responded that Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini will soon intervene to resolve the matter to expedite the process.Importantly, it was a long-pending demand of the people of Jhajjar district, which has the credit of producing a large number of soldiers, including the present Army Chief, to establish a Sainik School at Matanhail.The then chief minister, Om Prakash Chautala, acquired around 313 acres of land in Matanhail and Rudiawas village on April 10, 2002 for setting up the school. Permission for the school was also granted by the then defence minister, George Fernandes. In September 2003, the Union defence minister even laid the foundation stone of the school, but nothing materialised to date.In 1961, when the Union govt started 5 Sainik Schools in the country to encourage students from ordinary families to join the armed forces, 1 such school was established at village Kunjpura near Karnal in Haryana. Kunjpura has the rare distinction of sending around 800 cadets into the National Defence Academy (NDA), which is the highest number of cadets sent by any other Sainik School in the country.Later, one more school opened in Rewari in 2009. At present, around 1100 students are studying in these 2 Sainik Schools of the state. Despite constituting 2% of the population of the country, around 10% of soldiers in the armed forces are from Haryana. MSID: 129390752 413 |
