While the Shiv Sena drums up a feverish pitch on its Mumbai-for-Maharashtrians campaign and aggressively pushes the cause of Marathi, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) ruled by the party is struggling to run Marathi-medium schools in the financial capital and ended up closing 27 such schools last year.
Reason: there are not enough students to sustain these schools.
On the other hand, the country’s richest civic body is witnessing a steady rise in the number of students wanting to study in its Hindi medium and English medium civic schools or go to private schools.
Officials said this was a reflection of the demographics and cultural aspirations of even the city’s not-so-well-off classes who generally send their children to civic schools.
BMC schools cater to about 4.4 lakh students of the total estimated 16 lakh in Mumbai who study in classes one to 10. Data accessed by The Indian Express showed that the number of Marathi-medium BMC schools fell to 407 last year from 434 in 2008, the number of students in these schools fell by nearly 20 percent to 107,413 in 2009 from 132,725 in 2008.
Sources : http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Reality-check–Sena-run-BMC-shut-27-Marathi-schools/575408