The higher secondary admission process in Kerala has gone haywire following the High Court’s Monday order scrapping the new Plus-II batches allotted by the Congress-led Government to various schools overcoming the Higher Secondary Director’s recommendations. This is expected to affect the education of thousands of students.
The Government on Tuesday asked the State Advocate General to take the necessary steps to file an appeal against the court’s interim verdict, expressing its will to continue the legal battle over the issue. “But it is not going to solve the problem of these students. The case may take a long time to come to an end,” said a parent from Kondotty in Malappuram district.
On Tuesday, the Higher Secondary Director informed that the entire admission procedures for Plus II course in all the new higher secondary schools and freshly allotted batches has gone haywire in the context of Monday’s High Court order. The Director said the admission procedures could restart once the Government issued a new order.
legal experts say that it is not the verdict of the High Court's single-judge bench cancelling newly allotted Plus-II batches which is affecting the students' future but it is the Government's action that has pushed them into trouble. Had the Government examined all factors involved while allotting the new batches last month, this situation would not have arisen, they say.
The Government had last month allotted more than 700 new Plus-II batches in the State out of which 86 were given the batches by overcoming the criteria. The Secretary, Public Education Department, had at that time warned the Government that this could imply legal problems. The Government had tried to justify its action even after getting this warning, legal experts point out.
A retired top official of the Education Department said that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Education Minister PK Abdu Rabb had got enough time to remove the schools which did not qualify to conduct Plus-II courses from the list of schools to which new batches were given but they had taken the issue lightly, probably under pressure from vested interests.
“The Government had made the new allotments very late though there was enough time for it to do this at the start of the academic year. If they had done that they could have solved possible anomalies in time. Even the Government cannot say for sure now whether the admissions could be completed smoothly this year,” the retired official said.
As the Government is preparing to file an appeal in a division bench challenging the single-judge bench’s verdict, various schools affected by its Monday order also will approach the division bench arguing that the cancellation of allotment of fresh Plus-II batches to them would lead to the denial of right to education of the students.