Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday called for an all-party virtual meeting on Friday to discuss ‘scholarship for minorities’. The meeting will be held at 3.30 pm on Friday. This comes days after the Kerala High Court held that the action of the state government in sub-classifying the minorities by providing merit-cum-means scholarships cannot be legally sustained.
On May 28, a division bench, headed by Chief Justice S Manikumar cancelled a 2015 state government order under which 80 percent of the merit-cum-means scholarships went to the Muslim community and 20 percent to the Christian community including Latin Catholic and converted Christians.
The high court issued the order on public interest litigation, directing that the scholarships should be distributed on the basis of the population of the communities. The HC order was issued on a petition filed by Justin Pallivathukkal, a native of Palakkad district against the 2015 order. According to the petition, “Separating minorities into Muslims and Christians is against secularism. The government benefits should be made available to all minorities in proportion to their population.”
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