Ahead of the Chief Minister's formal announcement on the issue of corporate education for backward classes, student groups have broken into violent protests. Members of the Akhila Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) staged a dharna at Secretariat on Thursday. About 200 ABVP workers were arrested in a scuffle between protestors and the police.
There were raucous protests by ABVP members in Karimnagar as well, while in Mahabubnagar, a person jumped from the top of a police station to draw attention to the issue of fee reimbursement.
It all started on Wednesday, when the Rosaiah government issued a Government Order (GO No. 162) scrapping one of YSR's schemes. The scheme provided for government-sponsored corporate college education for students from the weaker sections of society - including SCs, STs, BCs and EBCs. The aim of the scheme was to give these students opportunities to be coached for competitive exams that include IIT-JEE, AIEEE and EAMCET, which is the forte of private intermediate colleges.
The scheme was launched in 2008-09, and about 8,000 students from various backward sections were admitted into colleges for a 2-year Intermeidate course.
However, almost immediately after the GO was put up on a website on Wednesday, the government came under attack from political parties as well as backward class organizations, forcing the Rosaiah government to be amended - the troublesome clause that called for stoppage of fee reimbursement to the poor was deleted.
filed in:Students, Education, K Rosaiah, Y S Rajasekhar Reddy