PATNA, June 12 -- The saga of firing and subsequent legal battle between two popular educators of Patna - Faisal Khan aka Khan Sir and Roushan Anand - has brought to fore the sordid side of commercial coaching in the state, highlighting that the regulations prescribed for reining in such institutes remain merely on paper. Interestingly, as the present mayhem peaked, chief minister (CM) Samrat Choudhary announced "similar regulations" which are in force since 2010 via the Bihar Coaching Institute (Control & Regulation) Act in 2010 and the rot lies in feeble implementation rather than the policy itself. "The Education Department has been directed to prepare a manual in this regard (for regulations)," the CM said in a post on X. However, when the state government enacted the Act in 2010, it put in place such regulations - prior registration a must and laid down clear guidelines, viz. clearly mentioned curriculum with a timeline for different kinds of academic support, number of maximum students for every programme, qualification of teachers, prospectus with tuition fees and other details like lectures, tutorial, group discussions and basic infrastructure. The Act also made it clear that the district magistrate, by an officer not below the rank of sub-divisional officer, shall get examined the compliance to the provisions, viz. required registration and the satisfactory activities of coaching institutes. Violation of provisions could invite a penalty of Rs.25,000 to Rs.1-lakh. Yet, despite strict provisions, coaching centres remained unbridled and made hay, with the government responding only with knee-jerk reaction to problems cropping up every now and then. In 2025 also, following a medical aspirant's death in a private hostel in mysterious circumstances, the weaker section wing under Bihar CID again woke up to the need of regulating coaching institutes and hostels, ensuring compliance of the 2010 Act. Laying down the dos and don't for the coaching institutions, the then ADG had underlined the provision of their registration and verification of the staff working there and mandated that all police stations should have details of coaching institutes in their areas. There was a similar Pavlovian response in 2024 also with a crackdown on institutes running in violation of norms after an incident in Delhi, where three civil service aspirants lost their lives due to flooding of the basement of a coaching centre. The DM had then constituted several enquiry teams to scrutinise the functioning of all coaching institutions across the district. The focus was on the Musallahpur Haat area, one of the oldest coaching hubs of Patna, where hundreds of job aspirants of Group C and D stay in rented accommodations to chase their dreams. Khan Global Studies (of Khan Sir) and Gyan Bindu Institute (of Roushan Sir) are located in this area and locals attribute the present incident to the internecine war for supremacy with inflated claims of results between the two. In 2023 also, there was an uproar after the then additional chief secretary, education, banned the functioning of coaching institutes during school hours, asking the DMs to ensure compliance, while the Bihar School Examination Board ran its own coaching facility in an open admission of the huge gap between school/college education and competitive exams. This also contributed to non-attending culture. With the strong coaching lobby raising much hue and cry, the Patna district administration referred the demand of the coaching institutes for relief to run classes for competitive exams during day time to the department of education. Having discovered poor attendance in government schools during inspection and thriving coaching institutes in their vicinity, the department had ordered a crackdown on them in the hope that the students would start attending schools and government school teachers would stop bunking classes. But the enthusiasm did not last long and everything was back to square one, as many coaching institutes for engineering and medical also provide the facility of getting non-school attending students enrolled for board exams through "ghost institutions". Sanjiv Singh, JD(U) MLC from Kosi teachers' constituency, said that it was a fact that the coaching Act needed to be implemented effectively. "Education and marketing on false claims cannot go together. The government has taken it seriously this time and once the Act is enforced, things will be controlled. But far more important is to ensure quality education in schools and colleges," he added. A teacher of a coaching institute, who did not want to be quoted, said that adherence to norms would help all - the students, the institutes as well as the government - and prevent such ugly incidents. "I have no qualms in admitting that students are virtually being lured and trapped. Coaching can at best be topping on the cake if the basics are sound. If a student has weak foundation, coaching can create complex in him, as it becomes hard to catch up with the speed. Some coaching institutes also don't cover the syllabus," he added....