With photos revealing that parents and students had crowded outside the Kerala Engineering Architecture Medical (KEAM) entrance examination centres on Sunday violating social distancing norms, many prominent personalities have questioned the government’s wisdom to conduct the test at a time when the state is setting records in the number of fresh COVID-19 cases every day.
A photo captured by Malayala Manorama lensman R S Gopan from St Mary's Higher Secondary School in Thiruvananthapuram - which had gone viral on social media - showed hundreds of students exiting the examination centre while parents were seen waiting outside the gates standing shoulder to shoulder.
The students and parents wore the face masks. However, their actions clearly violated the social distancing norms prescribed by the health department.
The incident happened on a day when Kerala registered 722 new COVID-19 cases –highest single-day spike since coronavirus entered the state in January this year. Of this, 339 cases were registered in the Thiruvananthapuram, where a triple lockdown has been in place to contain COVID-19 spread.
Little wonder, then, that the incident shocked the Kerala’s collective conscience.
Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor blamed the government for the crowding. "This crowd of students crowding to enter an examination centre for KEAM2020 have made a mockery of the social distancing norms. A government which wants to combat COVID-19 would not be foolish enough to persist with these exams when students (and this MP) have pleaded for their postponement," he wrote on his Facebook page.
Tharoor had demanded that the exam should be postponed in the wake of surging number of COVID-19 cases in the state.
Film director Aashiq Abu too registered his protest against holding the examination during the pandemic, in a Facebook post.
"Stop all examinations that play with human lives. Let's give priority to human lives than competitive examinations," he wrote.
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