KOZHIKODE: The tussle over the admission of Nirmal Madhav at the Government Engineering College, Kozhikode began two months ago. SFI workers protested for alleged backdoor entry of the student and the college was closed initially for two weeks.
The efforts made by PTA to solve the issue also turned futile. Congress leader P T Thomas even convened a press conference favouring the admission of Nirmal Madhav.
The issue was soon taken up by political parties and following a direction by the Chief Minister Oommen Chandy the district collector P B Salim convened an all-party meeting. A technical committee was constituted to probe into the alleged illegalities in the admission and the committee submitted its report to the Government on Monday. However, SFI resumed agitations alleging that the District Collector deliberately intervened to make the report favourable for Nirmal. Meanwhile, Nirmal secured police protection through a High Court directive after filing a writ petition. He demanded protection saying that he was being denied the right to education.
ADMISSION FLAWED
Nirmal, joined the Calicut University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Kohinoor, a self-financing college, in management seat in 2009.
He discontinued his studies in the third semester. Documents submitted by Nirmal at the Government Engineering College here reveals that he joined the College of Engineering and Management, Punnapara as a first year student in NRI quota. He discontinued his studies there too and applied at the Government Engineering College Kozhikode, where he was admitted to the fifth semester on July 5.
Shaheeda P A, then college principal said that the admission of Nirmal in the college was given under a special order that she received from her higher authorities. She added that she didn’t know whether the admission was illegal or not but just followed the orders that she had received. However, officials in the administrative section of the college said that the admission procedure is completely illegal. “There is no provision for transfer of a student to a government college who got admission in management quota in a self financing college. We solely acted upon the order that we received from the department of higher education. The certificates Nirmal submitted in the college are not in order and do not comply to the admission rules of the college,” an official said. Besides, his rank in the state-level Common Entrance Exam is 22787 which is way below the other students in the college. The least ranked student in the class is ranked 5646. Nirmal’s father Thankachan then told Express that his son got admission to the college following the intervention of the CM.
“Nirmal couldn’t attend the third semester exam because of ragging and he had to discontinue his studies at the Calicut University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Kohinoor. He later secured admission at Punnapara college.
However, the delay in obtaining the mark list from the Calicut University denied a direct entry to third semester. Following this, a petition was filed to the CM citing the problems. Nirmal gained admission at the Kozhikode Engineering College following his direction to the Education Department,” said Thankachan.
College officials are also clueless about the waiver of two semesters. He has not appeared for both the semester exams but was given admission to semester five directly. The special order for admission of Nirmal also mentioned to conduct supplementary examination and internal examinations for him.