Supreme Court asks Kerala to provide security for examination

New Delhi, July 24 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday asked the Kerala government to deploy an adequate number of police personnel at examination centres where private medical colleges will conduct an entrance test in August. Students unions affiliated to the ruling communists had disrupted the test earlier.

A bench of Justice B.N. Agarwal and Justice P.P. Naolekar gave the directions to the state government while disposing a plea by a consortium of private medical colleges of the state seeking deployment of central paramilitary forces for holding medical entrance tests Aug 5 for the 2007-08 academic session.

The court impressed upon the state government that it was its duty to provide adequate security during the conduct of the examination irrespective of whether it was conducted by private medical colleges or government run institutions.

The bench asked the government to have the tests conducted under the supervision of the state's statutory Admission Supervisory Committee.

The Kerala Private Medical Colleges Managements Association had approached the court Friday for a directive to the central government to provide paramilitary forces for security during its Common Entrance Test (CET) for admission to four private medical colleges in the state for 2007-08.

The Kerala medical colleges, in their petition, had said they were not able to conduct the entrance test on two earlier occasions due to "state-sponsored terrorism", as students affiliated to communist unions prevented the conduct of the test and the police remained mute spectators.

The petitioners said the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government through its student organisations, the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), had publicly protested against the medical colleges conducting the test.

The private medical colleges said that the student wing of the ruling left parties had created political unrest in the state. The students had announced that they would not allow the CET to be conducted.

The petitioners said they were forced to cancel the entrance test June 23 after the activists of the SFI and All India Students Federation (AISF) disrupted the conduct of the test.

The petitioners alleged that the police had left the venue of the test at 7.45 a.m. before the arrival of the student activists and it looked as if it was stage-managed by the government.

The Kerala government has, however, denied the allegations contending that the deployment of central paramilitary forces on such flimsy grounds would undermine the federal structure of the country and strain centre-state relations.