Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat­narayan Ma­haraj has de­nied claims made by MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh. Ma­haraj's state­ment was read in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day by the clerk. The state­ment said Mac­In­tosh's claims re­gard­ing is­sues at the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School and the prin­ci­pal were raised dur­ing the sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on No­vem­ber 9. It added she had read a let­ter sent by the school's prin­ci­pal, Si­ta Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga, to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC), stat­ing Ma­haraj had threat­ened to lock her out of the school for ad­mit­ting "non-In­di­an chil­dren" and that she should not ad­mit "black chil­dren."

The con­tro­ver­sy, the state­ment added, stemmed from sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions made by the prin­ci­pal to the TSC in a let­ter, dat­ed June 17, when she re­quest­ed a trans­fer to a Gov­ern­ment school. Al­le­ga­tions es­ca­lat­ed and even­tu­al­ly led to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh call­ing a meet­ing on No­vem­ber 21 to find a so­lu­tion, it said. De­spite an eight-point agree­ment among the prin­ci­pal, the Ma­ha Sab­ha, the min­istry and the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), the prin­ci­pal failed to re­turn to school, it was stat­ed.At meet­ing this week, TTUTA said the prin­ci­pal had made cer­tain re­quests re­gard­ing safe­ty be­fore she could re­sume du­ties. Ma­haraj al­so de­nied he threat­ened to take away the keys for the school.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, the prin­ci­pal re­moved the dress code sign that was on the com­pound. He al­so asked the prin­ci­pal to en­sure the Hin­du greet­ing "Si­ta Ram" was used at the school. Ma­haraj al­so de­nied that Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj ac­com­pa­nied him to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion to lay charges against Ga­jad­hars­ingh-Nan­ga, two school su­per­vi­sors, the po­lice and fire of­fi­cers on Oc­to­ber 24. His state­ment said: "Mr De­vant Ma­haraj was not part of this process but did vis­it the po­lice sta­tion for a brief pe­ri­od while we were mak­ing the said re­port."