THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Noted filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan on Tuesday resigned as the chairman of KR Narayanan Institute of Visual Science and Arts (KRNIVSA) in Kottayam that has been at the centre of controversy over its director who finally stepped down earlier this month.
Gopalakrishnan said the controversy around the former institute director Shankar Mohan was engineered by disgruntled staffers who used students to falsely accuse the director of caste discrimination.
“Charges against Shankar Mohan were baseless. We tried our best to make it a good institute but a section of employees were not happy and they provoked students,” the filmmaker told reporters in state capital Thiruvananthapuram, adding that he has sent his resignation to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
He lamented that Kerala first invited Shankar Mohan, who was earlier director of Kolkata’s Satyajit Ray Film & TV Institute, to head the institute in Kottayam and was then “insulted and humiliated”.
“People like us have come out of caste, and religious barriers long back. The director had to pay a price for enforcing discipline. Our endeavour was to make it a prestigious institute,” he said.
The noted filmmaker faulted the media for hearing and highlighting only one side while the other side was “conveniently forgotten”.
Gopalakrishnan said the institute didn’t dilute its reservation norms for admission but introduced some changes to the admission process to attract talented students. KRNIVSA was set up by the Kerala government’s higher education department to impart training in film and audio-visual technology.
Chairman of the students’ council Sreedev Suprakash welcomed Gopalakrishnan’s exit.
Students said charges against the director include caste bias, changing course pattern, forcing sanitation workers and others to do domestic works in his official bungalow. But the director said he was hounded out for enforcing discipline and tried to bring some changes to make it a professional institute.
Shankar Mohan announced his exit from the institute earlier this month, insisting that the allegations of caste discrimination were raised against him after he took a strong stand against corruption in the organisation. “When I opposed the corrupt activities, some people raised certain issues against me,” he said, according to a PTI report on January 21.