Malappuram: The additional plus one batches announced by the Minister for General Education V S Sivankutty would not be sufficient enough to end the seat shortage in the Malappuram district. As per the minister's announcement, the district would get 53 new temporary batches.
Official data revealed that Malappuram recorded a shortage of 8,338 seats to accommodate all the students who applied for the plus one course. Hence, the additional 53 batches would only cater to 3,445 students if each batch accommodates the maximum number of 65 students.
Before the allocation of new batches, the district needed additional 128 batches to provide admission to all the students who applied for Higher Secondary admission. The government was earlier allocated 14 additional batches to the district. Though the district has got a total of 67 batches with the allotment of 53 new batches now, there would be 4,893 students remaining out of the plus one stream in Malappuram.
“We are looking hopefully into the intervention of Kerala High Court in the issue. The court will consider the case on July 31 and we would argue that the government should arrange facilities to accommodate all the students who applied for plus one. Apart from this, we would request the court to direct the government to find permanent solutions to the seat shortage in the Malabar region. The government also need to allocate permanent batches to Malabar rather than temporary batches to end the crisis”, P K Navas, Muslim Students Federation State President, who filed a writ in the High Court on the issue told On Manorama.
Meanwhile, K T Jaleel MLA argues that compared to last academic year, the LDF government has initiated action to accommodate more than 4,000 students this year in plus one.
“UDF government never allocated batches to Malabar considering the requirement. The fresh batches allotted to Malabar would remain until there are students to join”, K T Jaleel wrote on his Facebook page.
There are a large number of plus-one students in the district who are waiting to change the course and schools. Their request will be considered only after the confirmation of additional batches allocated to the district. This has also created chaos among the students and parents.