The Hindu : Kerala News : Marginalisation of weaker sections feared

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 20, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala

Marginalisation of weaker sections feared

Staff Reporter

K.T. Thomas

KOTTAYAM: The decision of the National Commission for Minority Education Institutions to accord minority status to five institutions run by the Pushpagiri Medical Mission would result in near-total marginalisation of the weaker sections of society from the education system, including Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, said K.T. Thomas, former Supreme Court judge and former chairman of the Commission appointed by the State Government to fix the fee in unaided professional colleges.

Talking to The Hindu , Mr. Thomas said provisions in the National Commission for Minority Education Institutions Act read together with the provisions of the 93rd Amendment of the Constitution had created an unprecedented situation in the State. As per the act, any community notified as such by the Union Government is a minority. And a minority educational institution is any institution established or maintained by a person or more than one person from among the minorities. "It's clear that the definition is not confined to the self-financing stream alone," he said.

"Now, through the 93rd Amendment to the Constitution (Act 2 of 2005 which amended Article 15), the Government had absolved minority institutions from the responsibility of providing special preference for the advancement of the socially and educationally backward classes and the SC and ST segments," he said. "This means that a large majority of educational institutions in the State would be able to get away without discharging their Constitutional obligations to the weaker sections, as nearly 90 per cent of professional institutions in the self-financing sector were run by Christian or Muslim individuals or groups," he said.

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