The reports had quoted Prithviraj Sahni, chairman of the Corporation’s education committee, as saying that 60 school sites will be auctioned off for commercial purposes. Sahni today told Newsline that he had been misquoted. “I never said that we are auctioning off sites to private players,” he said. “But we will transfer land and buildings of some schools to different government departments.”

Municipal information officer Deep Mathur also confirmed that the civic agency would not sell school land. “Some school sites that have been lying vacant for a long time may be given over to the Health department or the community services departments,” Mathur said. “But there will be no sale of MCD school lands.”

Sahni said 60 locations marked in the MCD plans as school sites, including some with constructed buildings, have been lying unused for several years now due to varied reasons. “Some of these sites are in areas where slum clusters have moved away, or MCD schools exist in the neighborhood,” he said. “There are not enough students in the area to warrant another school. There are also some sites where we have not even constructed any school due to paucity of students.”

Some sites, Sahni said, also lie in areas where most of the population are from the middle- or high-income groups. “Such people do not even send their children to MCD schools,” he said.

Sahni said 32 such sites are already being used as stores or clinics by MCD departments such as Licensing, Health and E&M among others. Now, he said, the department has forwarded a proposal to the municipal commissioner to change the land-use of 28 more sites for use by other departments.