Haryana School Necktie Advisory: Child Rights Body Wants Knotted Neckties Out of School Uniforms

Haryana school necktie advisory: HSCPCR advisory urges Haryana schools to drop knotted neckties for breakaway or velcro alternatives after strangulation deaths reported nationally.

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, July 12

The Haryana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (HSCPCR) has written to the state’s School Education Department recommending that government, aided and private schools discontinue the mandatory use of knotted neckties in student uniforms, citing the risk of accidental strangulation.

The advisory, issued by HSCPCR chairperson Tripti Sheoran on July 10, says the Commission has taken cognisance of a pattern of cases reported from various parts of the country in which school-going children have died after their neckties became entangled with swings, wall hooks and similar objects during play or routine school activities.

The Commission has described such deaths as accidental but preventable. The advisory does not name specific incidents or the states where they occurred.

What the Haryana school necktie advisory recommends

Haryana school necktie advisory: Where schools consider a necktie essential to the uniform, the Commission has suggested switching to clip-on (breakaway) or velcro (quick-release) neckties in place of the conventional knotted version. These are designed to come apart under tension, so that if the tie catches on an object, it releases rather than tightening around the child’s neck.

Until such alternatives are in place, the advisory says children should not be made to wear neckties during sports periods, physical education classes and other activities where a tie could snag on equipment or fixtures: playground apparatus, staircase railings, bus handrails and classroom furniture are the kind of everyday fixtures such advisories typically flag.

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The Commission’s mandate

Haryana school necktie advisory: The HSCPCR functions as an independent statutory body under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, with additional responsibilities under the Right to Education Act. Its record shows a recurring focus on school-level safety compliance: including past interventions on eliminating corporal punishment, school bus safety inspections under Haryana’s Surakshit Vahan policy, and state advisories tied to Section 134-A admissions. The necktie advisory sits within this same institutional pattern of using advisory powers to push safety changes at the school level rather than through binding regulation.

Part of a wider safety push this year

The advisory lands in the middle of an active stretch of school-safety enforcement by Haryana’s Education Department. In recent weeks, the department has issued final reminders to District Education Officers and District Elementary Education Officers over pending School Safety Quarterly Progress Reports and Action Taken Reports, warning that accountability would be fixed on officials who missed the 48-hour deadline.

Separately, the department blacklisted over a thousand private schools on the Chief Minister’s orders, shut down MIS portal access for hundreds more, and issued fresh directives on shifting classes out of dilapidated government school buildings.

Whether the necktie advisory results in a formal circular to schools (rather than remaining a recommendation schools can act on at will) will likely depend on whether it gets folded into this broader compliance drive.

What schools do now

The advisory is not a binding order; it’s a recommendation from a statutory child rights body to the Education Department, which would need to issue its own circular for the changes to become mandatory. Until then, adoption of breakaway or velcro neckties, or restrictions on wearing knotted ties during physical activity periods, depends on individual school managements choosing to act on the Commission’s advice.

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