Congress seeks resignation of Kerala Education Minister

The Congress-led Kerala Opposition has demanded the resignation of State Education Minister C. Raveendranath after serious lapses surfaced in the conduct of Class X, XI and XII examinations.

Speaking to reporters here on Tuesday, Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said that such serious lapses in the conduct of examinations to these classes have never occurred in the history of the state.

"The minister should quit and the state government should order a judicial probe. Already the Class X Maths examination is going to be re-conducted after being cancelled due to lapses in the conduct of the examination. Not only this, the Class XI Geography question paper consisted of 50 per cent out of syllabus questions and the Class XII Hindi question paper contained nine mistakes," said Chennithala.

"I have now been told that the Class XII Journalism question paper also had numerous questions that were out of syllabus while the Class XI Malayalam question paper had one paragraph written in English," he added.

The Congress leader said that over the years, the State Council Educational Research and Training (SCERT) was entrusted with the preparation of question papers but this time, it was "hijacked" by the Kerala School Teachers Association (KSTA), which is linked to the CPI-M.

"It has come to light that several of KSTA members run private tuition centres. Such people have been given the job of preparing the question papers," he said, adding that till now the state government has suspended only one official for this massive goof up.

"The minister appears to have no clue about what is happening. We are not going to seek legal measures because the future of more than one million students will be in jeopardy. I have received frantic calls from many students," Chennithala said.

State CPI-M Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan admitted to the errors that have surfaced in the conduct of the examinations.

--IANS

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