The Kerala High Court on Tuesday asked the Centre and State governments to respond to a plea for a directive to provide sufficient infrastructure to enable marginalised and poor school students to attend online classes.
In a public interest litigation, Abdul Latheef M. from Kozhikode pointed out that it was the duty of the government to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children till the age of 14. But the government had not taken any steps to provide necessary infrastructure facilities to the students to attend online classes.
Majority of the students were studying either in government or aided schools and most of these students were rural or urban poor. The parents of these children could not afford to buy costly devices such as television, internet, smartphone, and computer to enable their children to attend online classes.
The petitioner pointed out that a study by the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad showed that at least seven-lakh students could not pursue online classes across the State. Initially, the government had come out with a policy to purchase laptops with the cooperation of Kerala State Financial Enterprises by providing loans.
Of the 60,000 laptops initially ordered through Kudumbasree units, only 5,000 laptops were made available and there was no answer to the needs of the remaining students, who were in need of a computer to follow online classes.
A girl named Devika had committed suicide last year as she was unable to attend online classes. Such unfortunate incidents could have been avoided by providing adequate devices and internet facilities to the needy children by the Centre and State governments, he said.
The court directed the Centre and State governments to file a statement in response to the petition.
