Schools in Kashmir have been closed due to the shutdown call by separatist groups.
On the outskirts of Srinagar, a government girls school closed for last four months due to the unrest in Kashmir was burnt in a mysterious fire incident on Monday evening. Officials say 18 schools have been set on fire during the current unrest.
The schools have been closed due to the shutdown call by separatist groups.
For Badre Duja and Akif Farooq, two friends from downtown Srinagar, it has been an anxious wait for schools and colleges to reopen as the lockdown completes 110 days.
"The government and all parties involved in this turmoil should rise above what happened and do justice to the people of Kashmir, to the students who lost their lives, to the students who are not able to go to school, college universities and the best of the option is to come up with a solution," said Badr Duja, a student in Srinagar college.
"I want to go back to school, but I have been barred from it for the last four months. There are also my friends who have been injured and blinded in pellet firing during the unrest," said Akif Farooq, a student of Class 12.
So far, the effort to reopen schools has failed as both government and separatist groups are accusing each other of playing politics over education. The separatists have been saying that children are not safe outside homes because most of the people killed and injured during unrest were students.
But state education minister Naeem Akhtar faced death threatens by terrorists for attempting to reopen schools.
"I don't think there can be a lower point of degeneration for us, where our children want to go to school and somebody is preventing them from doing that," Mr Akhtar said.
But it's not just the shutdown call by separatists that has closed the schools in Kashmir. Dozens of schools are still occupied by security forces brought here to contain the unrest.
Srinagar's prestigious girls higher secondary school of Kothibagh is looking like a major security installation as hundreds of paramilitary forces are stationed inside. Concertina wires have been laid around it.
Officials say more than 12 lakh students are unable to go to school for the last four months in Kashmir as the education has become a new flashpoint during current unrest.