The alleged instances of forgery and impersonation hounding the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) have caused a huge embarrassment for parent CPM that helms the ruling Left alliance in Kerala.
Too many fakes — a degree certificate that helped an SFI leader secure MCom admission, the forged experience certificates a former member furnished to get teaching jobs and a case of impersonation in a college campus election — have put Kerala’s most popular students’ organisation and the CPM under the pump.
In what appeared to be a face-saving measure, the SFI on Tuesday sacked Nikhil Thomas, an MCom student and SFI leader at MSM College in Kayamkulam, Alappuzha, who has been accused of securing admission with a fake BCom certificate of Kalinga University in Raipur. Thomas “passed out” from the university in Raipur while he was a bachelor’s student at MSM College during 2017-20.
Even more intriguing is how Kerala University gave him the mandatory equivalency certificate in lieu of the Kalinga University degree and enabled him to get admission to the postgraduate programme.
Hilal Babu, manager of MSM College, an aided institution, on Tuesday told reporters that Thomas was recommended by a leader of the ruling party. But he refused to identify the leader saying: “It will cause problems for him if I reveal his name”.
CPM Kayamkulam area secretary P. Aravindakshan on Tuesday termed Thomas’s act a “betrayal” of the party’s trust.
After news broke about Thomas “graduating” from Kalinga University while he was still a BCom student at MSM College from 2017-20, the SFI state unit had summoned him to produce his certificate on Monday.
The SFI secretary had on Monday validated Thomas’s degree certificate as genuine. But Kerala University vice-chancellor Mohan Kunnummal revealed that Thomas was a regular student at MSM College but had not cleared his BCom exams, airing suspicion about the certificate.
Kalinga University said Thomas was not their student, implying that his certificate was fake.
K. Vidya, a former member of SFI, has been booked in a cheating case for allegedly forging teaching experience certificates on fake letterheads of her alma mater Maharaja’s College in Ernakulam to get a temporary job in Kasaragod. A college in Palakkad where she applied for the temporary job recently exposed the forgery.
In the impersonation incident that came to light last month, SFI leader A. Vishak of the Christian College Kattakada in Thiruvananthapuram allegedly managed a backdoor entry as a university union councillor without contesting the election. His college principal G.J. Shaiju allegedly replaced the winning SFI leader A.S. Anakha with Vishak.
Shaiju and Vishak, since suspended from the college, have been booked for cheating, forgery and criminal breach of trust.
CPM state secretary, M.V. Govindan, on Tuesday refused to respond to reporters’ queries on the SFI imbroglio.
