Plus two courses: HC comes down on state govt

: Coming down on the government in the Plus two cases, the Kerala High Court today said the interests of students would have been protected had the state complied with its earlier direction.
The observations were made by a division bench, comprising Justices Antony Dominique and Sheshadri Naidu, while hearing a batch of appeals filed by the state government against a single judge's order.
The single judge had on August 18 directed that only schools recommended by the six-member expert committee, which had received approval of Higher Secondary Education Director, can be given sanction to start plus two courses and additional batches this year.

The court had also made it clear that certain schools recommended by the committee, which had failed to get the Education Director's approval, shall be given provisional sanction to function forthwith, subject to conditions stipulated in the government order of July 31 this year.
Challenging this verdict, the government filed appeals, stating that 14,250 seats from 225 batches would be lost and about 81,000 students will be denied plus two courses by the order.
The division bench today also expressed displeasure over the government action in overriding the directions of the High Court in the name of policy. 'By what power you have diluted the directions of the division bench?', the court said.

A division bench had on July 10 directed grant of Plus two schools according to educational needs and to grant courses in nine northern districts from Ernakulam and 148 panchayats. "Now the state wants to revise the order of the court", the bench held.

The court also refused to accept the plea of Advocate General K P Dandapani that the files produced before the single judge earlier were not the correct ones. Though the AG offered to produce new sets of records claiming that they were the actual files, the bench refused to accept them.
Meanwhile, the bench also rejected the request of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, an organisation of backward Ezhava community, to implead themselves in the case.

The hearing in the case will continue tomorrow also.