Kendriya Vidyalayas offer a chance for lonely hearts to click

How and why a chain of schools began hosting matrimonials on its web site has to do with the very nature of KVs. Set up as model schools across India,many KVs are located in remote areas,where its young staffers have little opportunity to find potential partners. So KVS thought it fit to “facilitate” their search.

“The issue came up in one of our monthly meetings last year. While no formal demand was made by the teachers’ association,it had been brought to our notice several times that many of our unmarried staffers posted in far-flung KVs found it difficult to find a partner,” Avinash Dikshit,Commissioner,KVS,told The Indian Express.

“Since we have a website which is accessed practically by all KV employees,we thought why not also make it a platform to help interested parties interact with each other — and it seems to have become quite popular,” Dikshit added.

After the portal was launched last year,a teacher in a KV in Madhya Pradesh was among the first to post his details. He is now hoping to tie the knot with another KV teacher,currently posted in Kerala.

A teacher of music at an air force station KV said he is marrying someone whom he met through the site. “I am getting married in October,” he said. “We contacted each other through the KVS matrimonial and it worked for both of us. We are hoping now to get posted at either the same school or in adjacent KVs”,he said.

The KVS site has a link at the bottom right corner which links to a list of unmarried KV staffers who have put up their names,email addresses and phone numbers on the site. There are people from KVs in Kalimpong and Hasimara in West Bengal to Simdega in Jharkhand,Gwalior and Guna in Madhya Pradesh,Dehradun,and even Mumbai.

KVS,however,has no record of the number of matches it has made so far. “Our role ends at providing a common platform for our staffers to post their details and contact each other. After that we are not in the picture. Those interested contact each other and take their decisions,” said Dikshit.

The site carries a disclaimer saying KVS would not be responsible for false information,and urging users to “verify facts themselves”.

The KV experiment follows the example of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti which under its ‘Match making’ section started posting details of marriageable candidates along with brief resumes “in order to facilitate the marriage of employees of NVS,especially among themselves”.

Launched some years ago,the NVS “matchmaking” section has over 200 entries,and is believed to be doing rather well.