Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan's earlier criticism, that the higher education sector of Kerala was going to dogs owing to politicisation, seems to be quite relevant now as a series of allegations of student leaders from the ruling CPM getting undue favours from higher education institutions have now come up.
Over the last few weeks, the state has been witnessing allegations involving leaders and activists of the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the student organisation of CPM, getting undue favours from colleges.
A college principal in Thiruvananthapuram is accused of wrongly declaring an SFI leader having won in the college union election even as he could not contest the election owing to being over-age.
SFI state secretary P M Arsho was declared passed in exams by Maharaja's college in Kochi even as he did not attend the exams. Though it was said to be a technical glitch, the issue has hit the credentials of the prestigious institution. Another former SFI woman activist is accused of faking experience certificates from the same government college.
The latest in the row is an SFI leader, Nikhil Thomas, who is accused of getting admission to post-graduate course in commerce at MSM College at Kayamkulam in Alappuzha even as he did not pass in the graduation exams. He allegedly submitted a fake pass certificate from a private university outside Kerala.
Opposition party Congress alleged that in most of these cases there were interventions from CPM leaders for the undue favours for their student cadres.
Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan had locked horns with the CPM government in Kerala mainly with regard to appointment of vice-chancellors in universities in the state. His main contention, rather concern, was political interventions in the appointments. He even stated that the state's higher education sector has gone to the dogs. But the governor's intervention was then widely interpreted as BJP's attempts to make political interventions in non-BJP ruling states.
Education reforms activists said that the allegations raised by the Governor were now proved to be true.
"The governor's observations of politicising the universities have now become very evident," said R S Sasikumar of Save Education Forum, a NGO that has been fighting against the unhealthy practices in the state's education sector.
He said that the state education sector was witnessing a clash between academic interest and vested interest. As insisted by the governor, reputed academicians without vested interests should be made vice-chancellors of universities so that the vested interests could be resisted to a large extent.
After the governor tried to resist political appointments in the universities by exercising his powers as chancellor, the CPM government had been brought in an amendment in university laws removing the governor from the chancellor post of universities. But the governor is yet to give nod to the Bill passed by the assembly in this regard.