Two colleges in Vellore — one run by the Church of South India with government aid and the other by the government — are discriminating against Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe admission seekers by issuing multi-coloured application forms and making them wait in ‘exclusive’ queues.
In Muthurangam Government Arts College, the SC/ST candidates pay `2 and get a white form at a separate counter, while others pay `27 for forms available in different colours, depending on the course they are applying for. In the aided Voorhees College, SC/ST students are given a light blue-coloured form for `2 but not given the prospectus, which is provided only to those who pay `27.
When asked about the blatant discrimination, the government college principal K Malathi played down the issue saying ‘non-regular staff’ of the college had distributed separate forms ‘out of ignorance’, refusing to take responsibility for the faux pas. “Since we wanted to use up old forms printed last year, I told our staff to distribute them first. But they handed over the old forms only to the SC/ST candidates by mistake,” she claimed and promised to stop the practice immediately. However, even after, the college was issuing different forms through various counters.
While Voorhees College’s principal was out of town, senior professor D Thirumaran of the Defence Department said the different coloured forms system was meant to ease their sorting for processing.