Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) vice-chairman and executive director K. Anvar Sadath has admitted errors in the figures in casteless students in the state. According to a Facebook post he said that most of the students who were shown casteless in the records had, however, entered their religion. The real figure of those who remained casteless according to the figures given by Mr Sadath was less than 3,000. The Opposition has filed a privilege notice against education minister C, Raveendranath in connection with the numbers he presented in the Legislative Assembly on the students admitted to schools without citing their caste or religion.
The notice given by K.C. Joseph of the Congress to Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan pointed out that now it has been revealed that the number of children who opted to mark ‘no-caste’, and ‘no-religion’ in their school admission applications as mentioned by the minister in the Assembly was wrong. The minister had earlier stated in the Assembly that there are about 1.25 lakh students who have not marked their caste in their school application.
Meanwhile, education minister C. Raveendranath has come forward with a clarification on the controversy over the ‘caste-religion’ column in school applications. He has said that he was only giving a technical reply to a technical question raised in the Assembly. Mr Raveendranath while speaking to reporters in Kozhikode said that he had given instructions to DPI make corrections if there are mistakes in tabulation.
