Indian tycoon Adani takes over school from Catholic nuns
The billionaire businessman’s foundation has been told to remove ‘Mount Carmel’ from the school’s name
Updated: October 02, 2024 05:03 AM GMT
India’s leading industrialist, Gautam Adani, has taken over a well-known high school in western Maharashtra state that Carmelite nuns ran for over five decades.
Adani Foundation, the charity arm of the billionaire with business interests from apples to aviation, took over the management of Mount Carmel Convent Senior Secondary School in Cement Nagar in Chandrapur district from the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel (CMC) in September, a CMC nun told UCA News on Oct. 1.
Since 1972, the CMC nuns have managed the school, owned by India’s leading cement maker, Associated Cement Company (ACC), which Adani Group acquired from Switzerland-based Holcim in 2022.
The ACC built the school with its funds for Corporate Social Responsibility and entrusted the management to the nuns.
“We moved out of the school on Sept. 1 after handing it over to Adani Group,” Sister Leena, the school’s former principal, told UCA News. “We did not want to work under Adani Group, which has commercial interests as their priority.”
“Their policy and our policy are totally different, so we have moved out,” she said.
The congregation has urged the Adani group to remove “Mount Carmel” from the school’s name since its nuns are no longer involved in management.
The congregation started the school at the invitation of ACC, “who wholeheartedly supported our mission for good education of children in the remote district,” Leena said.
Bishop Ephrem Nariculam of Chanda, who oversaw the school, told UCA News on Oct. 1 that the nuns “decided to leave the school because of some interference in the management from the Adani group.”
The co-ed school, with some 2,000 students on its rolls, observed its golden jubilee in 2022.
The Adani Foundation, a non-profit organization, officially, assumed management of the school in September 2024, the foundation said in a Sept. 30 statement.
The school’s transfer process “adhered to all required protocols and approvals” by the Central Board of Secondary Education and the state government.
The transfer of the school “owned by ACC Ltd was initiated as per the wishes and decisions of the Carmel Education Society to discontinue managing the school,” Adani Group’s statement said.
Adani, according to Forbes magazine, is the second-richest Indian and stands at 17th position in the world’s billionaires’ list.
