Officials say the government order follows an inspection last year by the Public Works Department (PWD), which declared Chashma Building as “dangerous”. The PWD had suggested moving the school out of the structure.

But school authorities fear that the merger in the middle of an academic term will raise problems for students. Parents, meanwhile, say it will herald the death of Urdu language in the area. “They can shift the school to another building, may be Panama Building, but the idea of merger raises questions,” the school’s PTA secretary, Abbass Dehlvi, says.

There are 22 Urdu-medium schools in Delhi and there has been demands to make Urdu a third language rather than having it as a medium.

Delhi Minorities Commission chairman Kamal Farouqi says minorities have every right to send their children to a school of their choice. “According to the Three Language Formula of our country, framed in 1953, and the National Policy on Education-1968, parents are allowed to teach their children any language of their choice if it is a linguistic minority.”

He says the Minorities Commission would take up the issue of merger. “It is against the basic rights of the Urdu-speaking population,” he says.