Malappuram: Students in northern Kerala, who are finding it hard to secure admission to Plus-One courses of their choice due to severe scarcity of seats, are pinning their hopes on the Kerala High Court's intervention to end the crisis.
Accepting the pleas filed by students, parents and Muslim Students Federation (MSF) state president P K Navas, the High Court on Thursday sent a notice to the government seeking its response in the next two weeks.
Even after completing the supplementary allotment, many students in the Malabar region are yet to get admission to the courses of their choice. it is estimated that the region has a shortage of around 50,000 seats at present.
Malappuram district is the worst affected with a shortfall of around 29,000 seats.
Colleges have reported that at present seats are available in the management quota in aided and unaided school, which are not affordable for many students.
In Malappuram district, 77,827 students passed the SSLC examination, while 81,022 students have applied for the Plus-One admission at different schools in the district. However, the district only has 48,250 seats in government higher secondary schools.
There are 7,190 plus one seat in the aided schools and 11,291 seats in the unaided sector. The Polytechnic, ITI and VHSE jointly have around 4,000 seats. Even with all these, the district still needs more than 13,000 seats to accommodate all the eligible students seeking Plus-One admission in the merit quota after completing the admission to the merit quota in the plus-one and VHSE streams.
“We believe the High Court intervention would alert the government to take serious steps to end the crisis. We expect the efforts taken by MSF and Indian Union Muslim League in the issue would bring a positive result,” Navas said.
Meanwhile, MSF leaders said they would continue their agitation against the government.
The education department has earlier decided to allocate 14 additional batches to the district. However, experts have pointed out that it would not solve issues as the decision would only increase the number of available seats by 700.
Senior Muslim League leaders and MLAs have met the Chief Minister and Education Minister seeking their intervention in the issue.