JEDDAH: The principal of International Indian School-Jeddah (IISJ) yesterday denied malpractices in shortlisting candidates for management committee elections and appealed to parents not to turn the school into a political arena.
Syed Masood Ahmed said the much-awaited election would be conducted on June 20 as scheduled. “There is no plan to postpone the process as demanded by some disgruntled candidates whose applications have been rejected for failing to fulfill necessary conditions set by authorities,” he said.
“We have set out certain norms and conditions for the election and we have been strictly following them. We have informed parents about these conditions well in advance. Everything is transparent and recorded and we are open for verification,” he said.
The principal said the election commission was not against or in favor of certain candidates. “We respect all parents,” Ahmed said.
“We are surprised by the complaints made by some candidates. We disqualified them when they failed to produce necessary documents,” he said about complaints filed by Mohan Balan and other disqualified candidates.
He said the commission had set out lenient conditions this time compared to the previous election. “This time, we have set graduation as the minimum qualification of a candidate whereas last time it was post-graduation. We have not asked them to produce salary certificates like last time,” he said.
“I would like to assure you that everything related to the election process is done clearly and transparency and there is not an iota of favoritism. We expect all potential candidates to follow the rules and regulations,” he said.
The commission announced recently that nine out of 21 candidates have qualified for the June 20 managing committee election.
The disqualified candidates alleged at a press conference that there was a deliberate attempt to keep them out of the committee as “the authorities did not want strong and efficient candidates capable of protecting the interests of students, teachers and parents.”
Mohan Balan, a prominent community member, had approached the election commissioner and the supervisor for foreign education at the Ministry of Education, with the hope of getting his name reinstated among the qualified candidates.
But the commission rejected his request saying he had failed to present the original degree certificate for verification. Parents of Tamil students who constitute the third largest group of IISJ will not have a representative in the committee after Godwin Isac Raj was disqualified for being a member of the previous committee.
The Indian School Parents Forum (ISPAF) has urged IISJ authorities to conduct a free and fair election.
“We need a clear answer for rejecting nominations of many highly qualified parents who wanted to contest the election,” said Hassan Hassainar, former president ISPAF.
Hassainar was addressing a ceremony held by the organization to honor parents of top scorers in this year’s Class X and Class XII exams.
He said an efficient committee could play a big role in supporting the school, enabling teachers to concentrate more on improving the institution’s academic level.
Parents were not happy with the way school handled the qualification process and feel that qualified candidates have been disqualified citing various reasons. “If they want a strong and capable committee, they should have given efficient candidates enough time to fulfill the necessary conditions,” said C.H. Basheer, coordinator of KRW, adding that parents wanted more experienced candidates.
IISJ vote system is ‘transparent’
