The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has turned down Delhi government’s request to accommodate girls from the government school in Khajuri Khas, where a stampede on September 10 killed five students and left 34 others injured.

The civic body has also refused to give the government the ground at its school in Shri Ram Colony for a new school building for girl students, as demanded by the locals after the stampede.

MCD education committee chairman Prithviraj Sahni said the school in Shri Ram Colony already has about 2,500 children and is short of space.

“We have 25 classrooms and are packed,” he said. “If they (government) shift the girls here, the numbers of students will go up and a stampede-like situation could occur here.

“We don’t want such incidents — we have written to the (MCD) commissioner saying we cannot accommodate the request.”

Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely had last week said that the MCD had agreed to let the government use its grounds to build a school for girls who attend the Khajuri Khas school.

The Education department had written to the MCD Commissioner for permission to temporarily shift the Khajuri Khas Government Secondary School to the MCD school in Shri Ram Colony and suggested that both schools could run in shifts till a new building was constructed. Department officials said the new building would accommodate around 1,000 girls and would take at least three months to be constructed.

After the stampede, locals refused to send girls to the school and asked the government to build another school in the locality. An inquiry report into the stampede by Northeast zone Deputy Commissioner T C Nakh had also recommended that the girls be shifted to another school.

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