In a major blow to the United Democratic Front (UDF) government, the Kerala High Court on Monday directed the government to sanction Plus Two courses and additional batches to schools recommended only by the Higher Secondary Education (HSE) Director-headed six-member committee, ignoring the recommendations of the Cabinet subcommittee. Justice P.R. Ramachandra Menon issued the interim directive when a batch of writ petitions filed by various school managements against the refusal of Plus Two courses and additional batches to their schools came up for hearing.
Education Minister P.K. Abdu Rabb was the general convener of the subcommittee which had recommended 700 batches. The HSE Director-headed committee had recommended 640 batches, including 258 Plus Two batches in government and aided sector in 143 panchayats. The court pointed out that the Cabinet subcommittee had decided to obtain the opinion of the representative of the people while assessing the educational need of the locality. In fact, the files did not disclose “as to who pointed out the educational need, how it was pointed and when it was put forth.” No such opinion or material was available from the file. The court also noted that there was “no comparative analysis of the merits and demerits of the schools concerned with reference to such opinion. The select list came as a “bolt from the blue.”
The court said that there was a conscious change limiting the scope of sanctioning additional batches to eight northern districts from Ernakulam to Kasaragod as originally envisaged. There was no case for the Cabinet subcommittee that the recommendation made by the six-member committee headed by the Director, Higher Secondary Education, was defective in any manner. The court ordered that provisional sanction be given to the schools recommended by the six-member committee.
