'Don't give free shoes to Class 10 students'

Sakleshpur MLA H K Kumaraswamy (JD-S) on Wednesday urged the government not to distribute shoes and socks to students who are on the verge of completing their 10th standard.

Kumaraswamy, who raised the question in the Assembly, said the government was unnecessarily spending money on lakhs of students who would complete their schooling shortly.

“Why are you giving shoes to 10th standard students when they are about to leave school in a week’s time,” he questioned Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar.

Ratnakar said that 6-8 lakh students would be passing out of class 10 this year. As the department did not want to “neglect” these students, it has distributed shoes/socks to them, he said. “Though the decision was taken in August-September last year, we got the financial approval only recently. We didn’t want to neglect these students, as a majority of them will be going to government PU colleges,” he said.When Kumaraswamy was not convinced, Energy Minister D K Shivakumar asked him to drop the matter, as it was a novel scheme and that students would benefit from it even if they were leaving school.