We don't want foreign universities in state, will hold talks with govt: SFI

Kozhikode: K Anushree, state president of the Students' Federation of India (SFI), on Tuesday said there is no need for foreign university campuses to be set up in Kerala. She also said private universities should follow norms set by the government.

Speaking to the media after the SFI's protest march to the Calicut National Institute of Technology (NIT) demanding the dismissal of the professor who praised Godse on social media, Anushree said the students' wing of the CPM will soon hold talks with the government based on the Budget announcement.

In the Kerala Budget presented yesterday, Finance Minister K N Balagopal announced that foreign and private universities will be welcomed to set up campuses in the state. Student organisations, including the KSU, had come forward demanding to know SFI's stand on the same.

KSU state vice president Ann Sebastian challenged SFI to openly admit whatever it has said and done in the past was wrong or that its stance has changed in keeping with the times. "If they refuse to admit any of these, Balagopal must slap the comrades as they did with T P Sreenivasan and remind them of the history of SFI," Ann Sebastian wrote on Facebook.

It was in 2016 that SFI activists heckled and roughed up the former ambassador and then executive vice-chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council, T P Sreenivasan, at the venue of a global education summit in objection to the supposed 'plans to barter away the higher education sector to foreign private players'.