Kerala Opposition stages walkout over plus one seat allotment
Oct 05, 2021
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], October 5 : The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) staged a walkout from the Kerala Assembly on Monday demanding to discuss the plus one seat allotment.
UDF-led opposition brought an adjournment motion demanding to discuss the issue. While presenting the motion, Palakkad MLA Shafi Parambil said there are not adequate seats available for plus one in the schools in Kerala. Many students who have A+ in all subjects did not get seats in the first allotment.
Replying to Shafi Parambil's notice on an adjournment motion, Education Minister V Sivankutty said in the assembly that all plus-one applicants will get admission in the second allotment. He added that seats in various reservation categories that lay vacant after the first allotment will be converted into merit seats.
Sivankutty said that 4,69,219 students have applied for admissions of which 1,25,509 students got A+ in all subjects and this is three times more than last year.
"A total of 3,94,457 seats are currently available in the higher secondary sector alone this year. In addition, there are 33,000 seats available in Vocational Higher Secondary and about 70,000 seats in Polytechnic/ITI," added the education minister.
After the minister explained, the speaker denied permission for adjournment motion and the Opposition staged a walkout from the Kerala Assembly.
However, the opposition stated that nearly two lakh children are worried about getting admission as the number of Plus One seats in the state is inadequate.
While speaking to the media, Opposition leader, V D Satheesan said the total number of seats available in Kerala is much lower than the aspirants.
"Today we arrived to bring the issue of students who were trying to get admission for plus one seats in Kerala. The total number of seats available in Kerala is much lower than the number of aspirants. So thousands of students are not going to get seats and here 120,000 students are got full A+ in all subjects. Not even those students are getting desired seats for the desired schools in Kerala. The state government is not ready to solve this issue. So nearly 2 lakhs students and their parents are in anxiety, they are trying to get seats but they are not getting seats in their taluks of in their districts. So the situation is very serious and we raised this issue. But the government is not ready to settle the matter," said Satheesan.
He further said that our demand is to increase the seats and the batches. There is a gap between the number of aspirants and the allotted seats in many schools.
