Himanta Biswa Sarma questions Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren on ‘free Friday’ in schools | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday questioned Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren about giving Friday off at schoolsa decision that was reversed by the JMM government in 2022.
“I want to ask Hemant Soren, if you close the schools for them on Friday, why don’t we close the schools on Tuesday so that our children can pray to Lord Hanuman?” Sarma said this while addressing a poll in Dumka, Jharkhand.
In 2020, 43 government schools in Jamtara district, a minority-dominated area, had shifted their weekly holidays from Sunday to Friday, a move that was later rejected to reinstate Sunday as an official holiday.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had used similar rhetoric to attack the opposition on communal grounds. He also accused the JMM government of changing the weekly holidays from Sunday to Friday in an attempt to “fight” with the Christians.
‘First they fought with the Hindu community and now with the Christians. What is going on,” he had claimed.
The Jharkhand government had in 2022 dissolved the committees that had decided to shift the weekly holidays to Fridays.
“The committees were dissolved after investigations conducted by me and education officials of the bloc revealed that some schools in the minority community-dominated areas of Jamtara district had switched to Fridays as their weekly day off for over two years,” Jamtara said -district education officer (DEO). ) Abhay Shankar had said.