The joint venture between the Sri Chaitanya and the Narayana Educational Institutions, ChaiNa, has been called off with the former alleging that the latter has misled parents by claiming the top-scoring students in the batch that just wrote their exams were ‘theirs’.
ChaiNa was created to train the very best students. And students of this venture were known for topping all the national- and state-level exams.
However, controversy broke out this year over several rank-holders, including Bhogi Suraj Krishna, the JEE (Main) topper. Sri Chaitanya Educational Institution said that these students were sent to the Sharvaani batch, which just passed out, through them. But Narayana Educational Institutions has been claiming the students studied with them.
This, the Sri Chaitanya group said, had violated their terms of agreement.
The Director of Sri Chaitanya, B Sushma, told the media, “Holders of the ranks 1,2,4, 5 and 7 are from our institutes. They studied here or they went through us to the Sharvaani batch. But Narayana now is wrongly claiming that these students are theirs.”
She added that they would take legal action against Narayana Educational Institutions if they didn’t retract their claims.
“We are being pressured by parents and students alike. We will have to take legal action if they don’t stop,” she said.
Sushma also said they were pulling out of the agreement. “There is only one combined batch that will pass out next year and, from this year, we are going our separate ways due to unethical practices followed.”
This is not first spat between the two institutes. Earlier, in October 2017, two parents filed cases against Sri Chaitanya, alleging their kids were abducted by staffers.
At that time the Sri Chaitanya management accused the Narayana group of pressurising parents to file false cases against it, as a form of harassment.
The feud between the two groups has invited the ire of activists and student groups, who have been fighting to ban both institutions for some time now.
Balala Hakkula Sangam President Achyuta Rao told TNM, “The two groups are fighting for profits out of the ranks, which they got through wrongful means, by harassing students … It doesn’t matter to them how many students commit suicide, they are still making crores of rupees."
He demanded that two groups should be banned from operations and a judicial probe be ordered to look into the student suicides in colleges run by both groups.
He also claimed, “In one academic year alone, more than 54 suicides took place in colleges run by both groups. Why are these students committing suicide? What is driving them to this? Aren’t the colleges driving these students to suicide?”
Telangana Vidyarthi Vedika (TVV), which is spearheading the campaign against Sri Chaitanya and Narayana Institutions, has also criticised the government’s inaction. In the wake of several suicides, TVV had demanded the government step in and end the CHAINA project.
TVV President, Bandari Maddileti, alleged that both groups had turned students into ‘profit commodities’.
Terming the two groups as a ‘threat to society’ Maddileti said, "They're even luring the parents of rank-holders with money and are then falsely saying these students studied with them and got the rank because of them. They are cheating people with their colourful ads.”
He asked that criminal cases be filed against both groups for ‘harassing students’.
Balala Hakkula Sangam told TNM that they intend on approaching the High Court and the Human Rights Commission demanding action against the two groups.