The Hindu : Kerala News : Bishops warn against enforcing fee norms

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Bishops warn against enforcing fee norms

By Our Special Correspondent

KOCHI, JUNE 9 . The Kerala Catholic Bishops Council has said the norms being `imposed' on self-financing professional colleges by the Government would lead to their closure as the conditions were difficult to follow.

The KCBC, which met here on Tuesday with Varkey Cardinal Vithayathil in the chair and discussed the ongoing face-off between the Government and the managements in detail, said if the "impractical" conditions were to be met, the colleges would have to find crores of rupees every year.

In a press statement, the secretary of the KCBC, Joshua Mar Ignathios, said the council meeting had expressed fear that the Government and the K.T. Thomas commission would end up torpedoing the very concept of self-financing educational institutions.

The Bishops felt that the conditions could never be followed by any college nor would any college ever agree to them. "It would be unwise to think that these conditions could be enforced by force or by legislation," they said.

The Bishops pointed out that the church had set up self-financing institutions with the funds raised from ordinary Christians and also by borrowing huge sums of money. These colleges were meant to impart relatively inexpensive but quality education to their children. It was "unjust and unacceptable" to insist that children from wealthy families, who had spent huge sums of money on special coaching for the Entrance examination, should be admitted free to these colleges.

The Government, mandated by the Constitution to protect and promote the minorities, was now imposing the burden of professional education on these colleges.

It was wrong on the part of the Government to pass on the responsibility to the self-financing colleges and resort to legislation to enforce it, the Bishops said.

They warned that if the Government did not desist from "the move to snuff out" the institutions, the Catholic Church, in partnership with other communities, would resist it.

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