PUDUCHERRY: The Puducherry government has decided that students will pay only 75 percent of the fees to be collected by self-financing schools in view of the hardships faced by parents due to the lockdown, said Chief Minister N Rangasamy.
This was decided at a meeting with officials on Tuesday. "We have discussed and decided at the meeting to reduce the fee and the order in this regard is being issued," Rangasamy told newsmen in an informal interaction. Accordingly, in a similar way to the previous year, the students are required to pay 75 percent of the total fees.
With parents facing hardships in paying fees and schools stopping online classes for those failing to pay fees, there have been various agitations in front of the school education department and other public places. Finding the going difficult, some parents are planning to shift their children from private schools to government schools.
Application for admission to Class XI based on Class IX marks from June 23
Meanwhile, the applications for admission to plus one classes would begin from June 23, School Education Director P T Rudra Goud said. Based on the ninth standard marks, science, commerce, humanities and combination groups will be allotted to students on their choice. The admission is not centralized and schools will conduct the process by giving preference to their own students. Students from private schools and others need to apply to individual schools for admission.
The Chief Minister also said that for colleges, the examination would be held online.
Police constable recruitment to be held shortly as per procedure notified on August 20, 2018
When asked about recruitment of constables in the police department pending for more than two years, Rangasamy said that he has given directions for conduct of the physical fitness test as per the old rules, i.e. as per the procedure notified on August 20, 2018.
The Puducherry Police department in 2018 invited applications for 390 posts of constables, 12 radio technicians and 29 desk handlers. Accordingly, 16,335 people had applied for the job of constables, 254 for radio technician and 636 for desk handlers. However the recruitment process got delayed as the one-time relaxation of upper age limit proposed by the previous V Narayanasamy government age from 22 to 24 years was not approved by the Lt Governor following which the CM referred it to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
After legal battles, the issue was settled and age relaxation was granted by MHA. Following this, all the applications were processed and valid applications were posted on the police website and the announcement was made to hold the physical fitness test for the guards on November 4, 2020. Accordingly, 13,951 candidates for the post of police constables, 229 for the post of radio technician and 588 for the post of desk handler were facing fitness tests.
But then Lt Governor Kiran Bedi ordered the suspension of the fitness test for recruitment of police constables scheduled to be held from November 4, following complaints with regard to the proposed new process of conducting the tests and ordered the police department to prepare a revised schedule for physical standard test, physical efficiency test and written test as per the procedure notified on August 20, 2018. Since then the recruitment process remained in a limbo.