Kageri slams Ratnakar for 'neglecting' education dept

Former minister and BJP leader Visvesvara Hegde Kageri on Saturday accused Primary and Secondary Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar of neglecting his department and sought the intervention of the chief minister.

Addressing a press conference in Bangalore, Kageri said the functioning of education department had been crippled due to maladministration.

Several pro-student programmes of the previous government had not been taken forward. Notebooks to students had not been distrubuted, grants to teachers had been stopped, several schools were yet to get computers and public-private partnership initiative for school development had come to a standstill, he charged.

He said 223 block education officers have been transferred in the middle of the year disrupting academic activities. The State government had failed to get grants from the Centre, Kageri charged.

Kageri took exception to two recent government orders, one on guidelines for constituting College Development Committees and the other for constituting vigilance committees to monitor public distribution system.

District in-charge ministers have been authorised to recommend committee members for both the panels, paving the way for appointing Congress workers, he alleged. Earlier, the recommendation to committees were made by jurisdictional MLAs.