Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 23 (PTI) Activists of the Kerala Students’ Union (KSU) on Sunday waved black flags at General Education Minister V Sivankutty here and placed it on his official vehicle as part of their ongoing protest over alleged shortage of plus-one seats in schools across the northern Kerala region of Malabar.
A group of activists of KSU, the students’ wing of the Congress party, suddenly jumped in front of the minister’s car when it moved out of his official residence here.
They not only waved black flags at the minister but also placed some of them on the bonnet of his car, raising slogans against Sivankutty and the Left government in the state.
Police later forcibly removed the protestors from the road and the minister continued the journey.
The minister’s office said in a statement that a discussion would be held with various student outfits at the secretariat here on June 25 over the plus-one seat issue, considering the memorandums submitted by them in this regard.
Meanwhile, plus-one classes will begin in 2,076 government, aided and unaided schools across the state on Monday, they said.
The Left government has been facing flak over the seat shortage issue after a girl student in Parappanangadi in Malappuram district in the region died by suicide on June 11 allegedly over anxiety about whether she would get a seat for plus-one (class 11) to continue her studies.
Several activists of the KSU recently marched towards various district collectorates demanding that additional plus-one batches be accommodated in schools in Malabar.
While the Congress party and the KSU have been making the demand, the Kerala government has claimed that there is no crisis in plus-one admissions at all.
Minister Sivankutty had claimed that thousands of seats remain vacant every year after plus-one admissions are completed in the region.
He also recently claimed that, every year, temporary additional batches are permitted to ensure that students get to pick which stream of subjects they would like to study. PTI LGK ANE
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