Thiruvananthapuram: Principal of a government school in Kerala has been transferred for resenting late arrival of state Education Minister for a recent campus function and the issue rocked the Assembly today with the Opposition strongly protesting the action.
CPIM-led LDF disrupted proceedings of the assembly, forcing the House to be adjourned ahead of the day`s schedule. Raising the issue through a submission, V Sivankutty (CPI-M) said Principal of the Cotton Hill School here KK Urmiladevi was summarily transferred without going through the norms to be followed in such cases.
Education Minister P K Abdu Rabb, however, defended the action holding that the Principal had behaved in an "arrogant" manner unbecoming of the head of a model institution.
The Minister said the Education Department authorities had actually recommended suspension of the principal, but it was under "humanitarian" consideration that she was transferred to another high school in the same district.
Protesting the Minister`s stand, the LDF MLAs rushed to the well of the House and started raising slogans against the government.
As the protests continued for a while, Speaker G Karthikeyan adjourned the House. The LDF members marched out of the house alleging that there was no justification for summary action against the principal, who hails from a Scheduled Caste community.
The incident that provoked action against the principal happened on June 16 when a function was arranged in the school campus in the heart of the state capital in which the Minister was to inaugurated a quality improvement programme.
The Minister was slated to be there at the school at 11 AM and the students of the high school section were seated in the auditorium in time.
The Minister, however, had arrived for the function about 90 minutes behind the schedule and the principal allegedly made some critical remarks about it in her speech.
Though the Minister did not respond to that at the venue, the principal was served a memo five days later and issued transfer orders allegedly before the deadline given to her for replying to the memo. Urmiladevi said she would be approaching the state Administrative Tribunal challenging the government order.
