Tribal student Binesh Balan takes it on Kerala government officials

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Binesh Balan, 25, a tribal student from Kasargod, who has joined the Sussex University in Brighton in the UK,  had a hard time trying to get central scholarship for his higher  studies for which he was eligible. For that he has named  two state government officials in the secretariat in his Facebook post and blamed them for red-tapism.  However, one of them denied the charge and said they had never tried to  scuttle his chances of  getting the national overseas scholarship instituted by the central government.

He had applied for  the scholarship for his masters’ degree in anthropology.    For over four years, Binesh Balan fought red- tapism and  alleged that he was discriminated against by the  two secretariat officials.  Binesh said in  the Facebook post:  “Had they been kind to me, I would have reached London much earlier.  I was addressed as an arrogant tribal just because I sought the status of the file pertaining to my scholarship. These two officials have never helped me. Whenever I enquired about the status of my application, they mistook it as arrogance of a tribal. Actually,  I inferred that when I reveal my identity they would be kind to me".

The two  officials,  who are now  deputy secretary and under-secretary in the local self-government department and secretariat respectively,  are dismayed by the Facebook post defaming them.   One of them said, “we can never withhold the application or create inordinate delay as the future of the student is at stake. Initially, he had sought a scholarship of Rs 46 lakh from the SC/ST department. In fact,  it was for the first time that a tribal student had applied for such a whopping scholarship. A senior bureaucrat sent the file to the central government. By the time it was returned, the application deadline had closed,” said the official.

Though Binesh wanted to study in the  London School of Economics, it did not work out due to  the delay in getting the scholarship. Later, he received the central scholarship  for SC students and secured  admission in the  Sussex University. Binesh had also alleged that SFI activists had assaulted him during his student days at the Karyvattom campus of the  University of Kerala.