: Congress Working Committee (CWC) member A.K. Antony has said the decision to ban politics on campuses is a big blunder as it has opened up the gates for religious and communal forces to run their roots on campuses.
Addressing a leadership camp of the Kerala Students Union here on Monday, Mr. Antony said that student organisations were absent from campuses, but communal outfits were active, leading to injecting of communal and religious feelings in young minds.
Mr. Antony came out strongly against private self-financing professional colleges and wanted the government to take strong action against those flouting the agreement they had signed after accepting all the government decisions related to the sector.
Private self-financing colleges had no business to continue if they could not run their institutions as per government guidelines.
The self-financing sector has been converted into the nerve centre of corruption and commoditisation of education.
He said that payment of capitation fee was rampant for admissions and teaching posts in these institutions. Some of these colleges were refusing to allot government seats on specious grounds.
He recalled that he had promoted the 50:50 norms in seat allocation during his tenure as Chief Minister. But these came to be violated even at that time.
He called upon activists of the KSU and Youth Congress to come out and fight against this trend irrespective of the soft-pedalling by the KPCC and the UDF government.
