Thiruvananthapuram: In what may be seen as a progressive step in Kerala’s cultural and political firmament, the state seems to be pushing the caste and religion debate by the wayside as it moves forward. Reports reveal that the number of students who secured admissions to Kerala’s private and government schools without mentioning a particular religion or caste has posted an increase with the passing academic years.
The government, this year, made an official declaration that around 1.24 lakh students in the state chose to leave the caste and religion columns unfilled while taking admission to schools.
DK Murali, the CPI(M) MLA from Vamanapuram, posed a query during Question Hour in the State Assembly on Wednesday, seeking a reply on how many students chose to leave the caste and religion column blank when taking admissions.
Responding to the question, C Raveendranath, Education Minister, said that as many as 1,23,630 students between class 1 and 10 choose not to fill in any religion or caste. He also pointed out that the number of such students in class 10 and 12 were 278 and 239 respectively.
The statistics are from the admissions of the academic year 2017-2018. Neither the district wise classification nor the region wise classification of the statistics have been made available. Admissions in over 9,000 schools in Kerala were analyzed to get the statistics.
