Move By Kerala CPI-M To Greenlight Private Universities Hailed

(MENAFN- IANS) Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 11 (IANS) The Kerala CPI-M after resisting private institutions of higher education for several years has now greenlighted setting up of private universities in the state and the move is being welcomed by those who were advocating for this for decades.

At a special Cabinet meeting held on Monday night the Pinarayi Vijayan government gave the nod for coming out with a draft Bill to welcome private universities into Kerala.

State Fisheries Minister Saji Cherian told IANS that this Bill will now be placed before the ongoing Assembly session and it will be cleared quickly.

Incidentally since this draft Bill got the green signal from the Vijayan Cabinet, TV channels are having a field day as the previous stands against setting up of private universities taken by leaders like CM Vijayan and numerous other present-day CPI-M leaders are being aired.

The CPI-M leaders had sworn at that time that they would under no circumstances allow this to become a law when it was first taken up by Congress Chief Ministers K. Karunakaran, A.K. Antony and Oommen Chandy, during their tenures.

P.K. Abdu Rabb former education minister of Kerala from 2011-16 said that for the past one decade the students of Kerala lost out hugely and the CPI-M was solely responsible for this.

“The Higher Education Council which I was chairman of and former diplomat T.P. Sreenivasan were all for setting up of private universities. He had gone to view the arrangements for a seminar on private universities, but he was beaten up by the student and youth wing activists of the CPI-M,” he recalled.

“Just look how many of our students in the past several years had to go to foreign universities to study. The CPI-M is like this only. They realise the value of progressive things much later and by that time a lot of precious time is lost,” said Rabb.

MG University's former Vice Chancellor, Babu Sebastian said that the decision was better late than never even though lot of precious time has been lost.

“A 40 per cent reservation for Kerala students in the proposed Bill is welcome. The aspect of social justice has been addressed. Maybe with this now we can hold back our students who are looking to go abroad,” said Sebastian.

However unfazed by the mounting criticism of the way the Kerala CPI-M in the past strongly opposed this move, Dr R. Bindu, state Higher Education Minister and wife of CPI-M politburo member A. Vijayaraghavan said if Kerala doesn't change things it will be very detrimental for its students.

“We have to move forward as times change and hence we do not have to treat private universities as untouchables. The student wing of the CPI-M has been told about such things. In India the scenario is that private universities have become the order of the day and hence we cannot stay out of it,” said Bindu.

MENAFN11022025000231011071ID1109192018