English may be a funny language, but the business of English-medium schools is certainly not. Security personnel at Mantralaya had a tough time yesterday afternoon controlling an irate group of around 50 people, who stormed into the chamber of additional chief secretary (school education) JS Saharia, demanding reasons for rejection of their applications – filed for 2010-11 and 2011-12 – to run unaided English-medium schools across the state.

The cluster comprised office bearers of many educational institutions “We wanted to know why the state government failed to accord its approval when 3,115 applications were short-listed after the scrutiny of over 8,000 submissions received from various locations. The authorities sanctioned just two schools on September 25, 2012 and have been sitting silently over the remaining proposals,” said a visibly irritated office bearer of an institute.