To cover up his failure, Pinarayi is blaming Antony: Chandy

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former chief minister Oommen Chandy has flayed chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan for putting the entire blame on A K Antony on the self-financing fiasco. ``He is now putting the blame on the agreement reached by A K Antony and the self-financing managements during his tenure as chief minister while launching the professional colleges in the private sector in the state. Pinarayi wants to cover up his failure in bringing down the fees of the medical colleges and that was the reason why he is now blaming Antony,’’ said Oommen Chandy.
Pinarayi is forgetting the fact that the decision of Antony to begin professional colleges in the self-financing sector was a revolution in the higher education sector of the state. He had introduced this idea to prevent the students of our state going outside Kerala for higher education since we lacked the facility. In 2001 there was only five government medical colleges and 12 engineering
colleges in the state. Now the state has 24 medical colleges and 119 engineering colleges in the self financing sector. This has happened due to the vision of the then chief minister A K Antony.
However, the LDF government miserably failed in reaching an agreement with the managements on bringing down the fees. The government jumped into an agreement before doing any homework. The management themselves realised that the fees was exorbitant and hence was willing to bring down the fees to help the poor students. However, the stubbornness of Pinarayi Vijayan toppled everything and the students were pulled into a deep financial burden, said Chandy.