Kollam: Students who do not belong to any religion or caste in the state face discrimination in university admissions. The online registration forms do not have an option to mark ‘non-religion,’ which is against the order of Kerala High Court and the government. Meanwhile, the financially weak students belonging to atheist category are deprived of educational and job reservations as they are considered “forward class.”



As per a government order, the students who do not have caste and religion should have the option to denote ‘non-religion, secular, or not applicable.’ However, the present online system has ‘others’ instead.



“The atheists should have provision to denote it clearly during their admissions, which will later be reflected in their certificates. The manual admission forms carried it earlier while the online forms do not have it.



The atheists of the state include economically backward people who are deprived of any educational or job reservations enjoyed by the believers,” Sreeni Pattathanam, Bharatheeya Yukthivadi Sangham general secretary, told DC. The general education department had issued an order (GO (MS) 77/74/G) on April 29, 1974 that schools should not reject admission to pupils if their parents/guardians are not interested to fill in the religion/caste in school admission forms.



While this order was in force, the government failed to incorporate it in online facility created by the National Informatics Centre in 2004 for the SSLC. A plea was put forward to the government to include ‘non-religion’ in the database for those who have no religious faith, which was rejected by the government. Subsequently, the case reached the High Court which directed the government to include it (GO (Rt) No. 5435/05/G).



The question is why should a secular country like India have such columns to divide young children in the name of religion and caste.