THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Lakshmi Nair has been removed from the post of principal of Kerala Law Academy Law College (KLALC) after a nearly month-long student agitation was called off following an agreement reached between the student representatives and the management in the presence of the State Education Minister.
According to the agreement reached during the meeting chaired by Education Minister C Raveendranath, P Lakshmi Nair has been removed as Principal of KLALC but the period for which she would be kept away from the post has not been clearly mentioned.
A new principal would be appointed in place of Lakshmi Nair, but she would be allowed to continue as a faculty member in the institution after five years.
Emerging from the meeting, Raveendranath said that the management has assured the government that a new principal with the prescribed qualifications will be appointed soon. The Minister added that the government would intervene if the management backtracks on its assurances.
Earlier in the day, Agriculture Minister and CPI leader V S Sunil Kumar spoke to the agitating students, giving indications that a resolution of the deadlock was imminent.
During the talks with Sunil Kumar, the students scaled down their demand. Instead of demanding the resignation of Lakshmi Nair from the institution, the students sought a concrete assurance from the government that she would not come back as Principal.
Protests started in KLALC on January 10, as part of a snowballing agitation that began following the death of Jishnu Prannoy,an engineering student in Nehru College Pampady, Thrissur after alleged harassment by college authorities.
The Thrissur agitation found resonance with students of KLALC in Thiruvananthapuram, some 270 kilometres away, as they said they too had faced harassment at the hands of the college management, primarily principal Lakshmi Nair, whom they accused of discriminating against students on the basis of their caste and invading the privacy of women students by installing CCTV cameras in the ladies' hostel, among other charges.