Kerala School Kalolsavam row: DPI seeks legal help to bring down appeals

Kozhikode: The ever-increasing number of appeals that derails the schedule of state school Kalolsavam has forced the authorities to seek the help of the state’s legal machinery for forming a new set of norms that could bring their numbers down.

The director of public instruction (DPI) has taken up the issue with the advocate-general’s office as a lot of students participate in the festival after securing favourable decisions by the high court and statutory bodies such as Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights. “We feel that introducing a set of criteria for allowing appeals could help bring their numbers down,” DPI K.V. Mohan Kumar said.

The Kerala high court has already expressed its desire not to intervene with the conduct of the festival by entertaining appeals. Dismissing a batch of appeals, a single bench of the high court in 2013 had said that it did not find tenable grounds to interfere with the order of the appeals committee. “However, the number of appeals only increased in the later years,” Mr Mohan Kumar pointed out.

The organising committee got 1950 district level appeals in 2015, 114 in 2014 and 800 in 2013. Curiously, the appeals have become a source of revenue for the organisers as each participant can file an appeal after depositing Rs 5,000.

The appeal system helps a participant approach a higher authority if they find irregularities in the decision of the judging panel. Participants approach courts or child rights commission at the district level seeking permission to participate in the state-level competition. At the state level festival, a higher appeal committee is arranged at the venue for the participants to approach it to file appeals for higher grades or positions.