Opposition protests: Assembly adjourns till Oct. 17

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Assembly adjourned to meet on October 17 in view of protests by UDF members over self-financing college issue on Wednesday.

The protests had begun during the question hour itself and Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan briefly adjourned the House.

As the protests continued upon the House resuming sitting, the House adopted a resolution moved by Chief Minister Pinarai Vijayan to put all the demands for grants scheduled for discussions on Wednesday and Thursday to vote. Accordingly, the demands for grants were put to vote and the House was adjourned by the Speaker.

Earlier, the Speaker warned the UDF members that they were crossing the limits as they raised a banner in front of the Speaker blocking his view.

The Chief Minister noted that the Opposition was unnecessarily disrupting the proceedings just for the benefit of about 30 students.

Mr. Vijayan said that he had held discussions with representatives of managements as the UDF leaders had said that the managements had a proposal to make regarding reduction of fees. However, he had cautioned the UDf leaders that the government on its own would not put forward any proposal.

When he met the management representatives, they did not make any proposal. He had specifically asked them whether they were ready to reduce the fees or had any new proposal to discussion. They replied in the negative.

He said that the propaganda that he had chided the Health Minister and Principal Secretary (for saying that they had arrived at a formula with the management to reduce fees) was incorrect.

Mr. Vijayan recalled that the government had stated that it was prepared to order a vigilance enquiry if the private medical colleges were collecting capitation fee. He had also explained that it was not possible to reduce the fee fixed at Pariyaram cooperative medical college.