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This is an archive article published on March 28, 2017

Minutes before SSC exam, student faints outside Khadki school gate

Due to peak heat conditions, centres should provide seating arrangement outside gates under tree shades, should start exam at 9 am, say parents.

pune, pune summers, school girl faints, pune temperature, khadki student, khadki school girl, khadki student faints, khadki examinee faints, pune news, indian express newsEXACTLY AT 10.30 am when the gates of St Joseph’s Boys School, Khadki, opened to let the SSC students inside the exam centre on Monday, 15-year-old Pranali Gaikwad felt uncomfortable and suddenly collapsed on the road. Pranali apparently suffered from a “heatstroke” after being out in the blazing sun for a good 45 minutes. Parents and other students immediately rushed to help and offered her water. Little later, she gained consciousness. Pranali is a student of St Joseph’s Girls Convent School, situated near this school.

The girl was taken in by the school authorities and asked to rest in the staff room. At 11.15 am, Pranali entered the classroom to take the exam. “Though I lost 15 crucial minutes, I could finish the paper well on time,” said Pranali, breaking into a smile, as she came out of the exam centre at 1 pm.

Pranali said her grandfather, Ankush Jadhav, brought her to the exam centre on a two-wheeler. “In the traffic jam at Dapodi, we were stuck for quite sometime,” she said, adding “The blazing heat and vehicular pollution were unbearable, and made her dizzy the moment she reached the exam centre.”

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To compound Pranali’s woes, she had to stand outside the school premises as the SSC students are allowed inside only at 10.30 am. Some students escaped the heat by taking shelter under trees.

Principal Father Anand said, “We have our other classes till 10…therefore, we allow SSC students only by 10.30 am,” he said. Parents, however, said the SSC board should direct schools to provide some seating arrangements as standing outside the gate is too much during hot days. “Not just at this school, at all schools the scene is similar. Children have to sweat it out in the blazing sun and risk their lives on road,” P Lokhande, a parent.

Sunil Padham, another parent, said the 11 am timing for SSC exam in March is inappropriate. “Children start from home at 9.30 am or 9.45 am…it is the peak traffic hour across the state and the situation is worse in places like Mumbai. The exam should ideally start at 9 am between 7 am and 9 am, as there are a few traffic snarls,” he said.

Also, Padham said the heat is too much in the month of March when the temperature keeps rising. “Therefore, 9 am time for SSC exam should be ideal as an individual is also fresh,” he said.

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When contacted, SSC board secretary K Patil said the school should make efforts to provide proper seating arrangements under shades for students. “Some schools do it, others should also follow,” he said. Pertaining to exam timings, Patil said, if they get written suggestions from parents, they will be discussed and appropriate action will be taken.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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