The annual school board examinations in Kashmir Valley have begun on Monday after more than 100 days of unrest. Education has been the worst affected in the turmoil with no government directives to keep the institutions open or to provide alternative to the students. The separatists have been issuing weekly protest programme since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in July and throughout these over 100 days of turmoil the BJP-PDP coalition government was just a pawn into the hands the separatist-supported arsonist who kept the Valley on tenterhooks and future of students in dark. The government deciding to hold the exams as scheduled has baffled the parents of the school going students who have been demanding for the postponement of the exams. The annual board examinations are expected to be the acid test for the PDP-BJP coalition government in unrest-hit Jammu and Kashmir which announced the schedule for examinations despite opposition from various quarters, including the student community. It was the student community who raised the voice against the dark future they were facing because of the prevailing uncertainty. The demand and conduct of the exams has exposed the duplicity of so-called Kashmir protagonists who try to instigate such kind of a situation because their own children have been safely lodged in best of the educational institutes across the country and abroad. In Jammu region the schools were closed along the International Border after Pakistan resorted to heavy firing violating the 2003 ceasefire. Following the heavy firing from across the IB and LoC, the government had ordered closure of over 400 schools in the entire Jammu region. The worst ever Pakistani shelling targeting civilian population took place on November one when eight persons, including two children and four women, were killed and 22 others injured along the IB and the LoC in five sectors of Jammu and Kashmir.
