How Will You Protect BPL Students In Self-Financing Colleges Now That Scholarship Has Been Withdrawn? Kerala High Court Asks State

The Kerala High Court last week directed the State government to clarify how a student belonging to the Below Poverty Line category can be asked to pay tuition fees at a self-financing college, even if it was a subsidised rate. 

Justice Devan Ramachandran also asked the State to respond to how such students can be protected now that they have been stripped of the scholarship scheme that was previously available to them. 

The Court was adjudicating upon a plea moved by a few persons belonging to the BPL category through Advocate V. Sethunath alleging that they were allotted to the Self-financing Colleges by the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations and that they had accepted the allotment based on their own preference under the impression that they were entitled to a scholarship. 

However, they argued that this scholarship now stood withdrawn on account of certain judgments and orders issued by the High Court.

Therefore, they say that they have been left incapable of paying the tuition fees and that they are being threatened with expulsion from the college.

Without entering into the merits of the contentions at this stage, the Court posed the following two questions before the State:

a) How can a 'BPL' student be asked to pay fees in the Self-financing Colleges even on a subsidized rate because the factum of the candidate being included under the BPL Category incapacitates him/her from doing so.

b) Since the scholarship has been withdrawn, how does the Government propose to protect the BPL students, including by either meeting their tuition fees and other expenses, or transferring them to Government Colleges, so that they can study without fees.

The State was asked to respond to these queries within the next posting date.

However, it was clarified that it is open to the Government to verify whether each of the students, in fact, falls under the BPL category and that these questions are applicable only to those students who fall within that category.

The matter will be taken up on August 9. 

Case Title: Nimal James & Ors v. State of Kerala & Ors.

Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (Ker) 376

Click Here To Read/Download The Order