Antony slams Kerala Assembly for passing medical admission bill

Thiruvananthapuram: Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister A K Antony today criticised the Kerala government for adopting a bill in the assembly to regularise admissions made in two medical colleges during 2016-17.

The House should not have passed the Kerala Professional Colleges (Regularisation of Admission in Medical Colleges) Bill 2018 for regularising admission of students of the private Karuna Medical College, Palakkad and Kannur Medical College, Antony told reporters here.

Alternative steps should have been taken to help the affected students and their parents, Antony said, adding, both ruling and opposition should come together to end the cheating of private managements.

Former KPCC President V M Sudheeran also came out against Congress-led UDF supporting the bill.

Meanwhile, Law Minister A K Balan defended the bill and said the legislation was politically and technically correct.

Government expect that Governor would accord approval to the bill, he said.

The issue of two medical colleges came into focus yesterday after the Supreme Court stayed Kerala Professional Colleges (Regularisation of Admission in Medical Colleges) ordinance 2017 promulgated by the CPI-M led LDF government.

The House on April four had adopted a bill to replace the ordinance with the support of Congress-led UDF opposition.

The bill was to regularise the admission of 150 students of the Kannur Medical College and 30 students of Karuna Medical College.

The Admission Supervisory Committee had cancelled the admissions after it found that these two colleges had admitted students in violation of norms.

The government brought the legislation to overcome the situation with a view that the students should not be victimised.

Justifying the decision to support the bill, opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala had said that they voted in favour of the legislation considering the students' future and would not in any way side with "profiteering" of managements.