Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said his government will implement the Kerala Administrative Service (KAS) as its objective is to raise efficient personnel in the Civil Services to the level of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Inaugurating the State conference of the Kerala NGO Union here on Saturday, Mr. Vijayan said the government could not backtrack on a project that would benefit the people just because it was being opposed by a section joined by the Opposition.
“The KAS is an important footstep in the administrative reforms in the State,” he said adding that the government would make the KAS a reality. It was his government that had made strong interventions to turn it into a reality, he pointed out.
Taking a dig at the Opposition’s allegation that the administrative machinery was at a standstill, the Chief Minister said attempts to create a smokescreen by vested interests would not succeed. The government was not of the view that there was discontentment among IAS officers and that they were deliberately deferring implementation of the government’s policies. The government would continue to solve the ‘issues’ that were part of the Civil Services as a system, he pointed out.
Mr. Vijayan said the government’s decision to make Malayalam compulsory in schools in the State would in no way replace the teaching medium in areas where children from linguistic minority communities were studying.
Malayalam in schools
He, however, said that in such schools newly enrolled students in Class I would be taught Malayalam as a subject so that their lack of knowledge in Malayalam would not affect their future aspirations to get jobs in the Kerala Civil Services.
