The turbulence in the CISCE doesn't seem to be getting over any time soon. The council's sacked Chairman; Father Jose Aikara just took one day to allege that his sacking was illegal. Notably, he was removed from his post on the charges of 'financial irregularities'. The Board's Secretary General, Arathoon has termed his allegations as baseless.
The trouble between the two started back in April with various schools filing a complaint against Arathoon, saying that he was forcing them to use the books authored by his wife. Following the complaints, Arathoon was sent a 'show cause notice' by the Chairman. The notice highlighted the fact that no family member of the board was allowed to pursue any board related trade or write books unless duly permitted by the board committee. In response to the notice, he accepted his mistake and offered to apologize. He also expressed his desire to take 'post facto permission' from the committee, saying that it is well within the scope of the committee to do so. But Aikara wanted to further probe his role.
This decision by Aikara irked the committee as everyone was of the view that since Arathoon has accepted his fault and apologized, there is no need to spend more money and investigate it any further.
In his defence, Arathoon added that "Technically he (Aikara) is right that I have not taken written permission but what about the verbal permission he had given. He as the chairman himself released the books in front of over a thousand principals at Kochi at a dinner organized by Evergreen publishers and released the books in 2013,"