Hyderabad: The fight against the school fee hike is taking on huge proportions if the number of calls received for the missed call campaign is any indication.

Apart from parents from Hyderabad, even people from other parts, including from North Eastern states, have expressed solidarity with the cause. More than 1.3 lakh calls were received till Monday.

The HSPA (Hyderabad School Parents’ Association), which has been organising various programmes for the last two months to garner support, had launched the unique missed-call initiative on April 23. Parents opposed to the fee hike were asked to give a missed call to 08686004050. The calls get automatically disconnected and the caller receives an SMS thanking him/her for the gesture.

The aim was to get anonymous support (from Telangana and AP) since parents were not willing to come out in the open fearing victimisation of their children in schools. However, what baffled the parents’ association was that they received calls from states like Delhi, Punjab, Karnataka, Haryana, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jhar-khand, Assam, Sikkim, and Manipur etc.

A HSPA member said that their message had spread to every corner of the country courtesy WhatsApp and Facebook. “Parents in most parts of the country are relating to this problem and hence are dialing the number given by us,” he said.

“We dialed a few numbers of those who called from other states to find out the reasons. They said that they were also facing the brunt of school fee hikes and hence responded to the initiative. Some of the parents even sought guidance to float associations like the HSPA to get everyone under one roof,” a parent from Hyderabad said.

HSPA wants to make use of this drive in various ways. Firstly it wants to put the list of numbers before the lawmakers to make them understand the seriousness of the situation. Also, the parents’ association wants to save the database of parents from across the country and they will be sent alerts and invitations for similar programmes to be held in the future.