Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala has announced that he will stage a protest in front of the Secretariat on Wednesday demanding a judicial inquiry into the question paper leak in this year’s SSLC and higher secondary examinations.
Mr. Chennithala said the protest will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 1 p.m. It will be inaugurated by KPCC president M.M. Hassan. The decision to stage the hunger stir was announced soon after he met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at his official residence on Tuesday and submitted a letter demanding a judicial probe.
Earlier in the day while addressing a press conference, Mr. Chennithala wanted Education Minister C. Ravindranath to resign owning up responsibility for the lapses in the conduct of the SSLC and higher secondary examinations.
In his letter to the Chief Minister, Mr. Chennithala wanted the government to take strong action against those responsible for the examination irregularities.
He cited the government decision to order a re-examination of the SSLC Mathematics paper and the high-level probe into the irregularities in the high secondary geography examination to emphasise the need for a judicial probe.
New allegations
He pointed out two new allegations related to the mistakes in the SSLC Hindi question paper and 14 out-of-syllabus questions that were included in the Plus Two journalism paper.
Mr. Chennithala alleged that the pro-CPI(M) Kerala State Teachers’ Association was involved in the preparation of questions papers for these examinations. The usual practice was to entrust the State Council for Education Research and Training (SCERT) with suggesting the list of teachers for preparing question papers. However, this time, the SCERT was bypassed and the list was sought from the KSTA.
Dereliction of duty
The teachers provided by the KSTA have links with private tuition centres. The model question papers prepared by these teachers for the tuition centres figured in the SSLC question papers. “This amounts to grave dereliction of duty on the part of officials in the Education Department,” Mr. Chennithala said.
