Punjab House nod to pvt varsity bill
The SAD-BJP legislators pinned down their government over paving way for setting up yet another private university through the Sant Baba Bhag Singh University Bill, 2014.
The SAD-BJP legislators pinned down their government over paving way for setting up yet another private university through the Sant Baba Bhag Singh University Bill, 2014.
Participating in the discussion on the bill, BJP MLA Manoranjan Kalia sought formation of a regulatory commission saying, “We should not set up graduate-manufacturing machines.
There is no authority in the state to check whether such universities have adequate infrastructure for students.” Kalia pointed out that mushrooming of private universities had dented the credibility of such institutions.
Akali MLA Nirmal Singh endorsed the views of the BJP MLA and said this bill would give “complete freedom” to the university to charge any amount of fee.
“The state government has no control over a private university. These universities have full authority to charge whatever fee they want to charge from students. Neither the Punjab governor nor state government has control over them,” Singh said.
His views we re ech oed by BJP MLA Som Parkash who questioned the rationale behind giving nod for another university even as Punjab already has 22 private universities.
While SAD MLA NK Sharma indirectly supported the bill, another Akali MLA Pawan Kumar Tinu came out in support of setting up Baba Bhag Singh University, claiming that it would not “loot” any student.
The university has been proposed to be set up at Khiyala village in Jalandhar district. The House finally passed the bill.
Other bills passed
Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal presented the Punjab Laws (Special Provisions) Act, 2014. He said a provision has been made that any application for regularisation of unauthorised colony or plot should be processed within 30 days.
“In the bill, officers’ responsibility has been fixed for processing application within 30 days otherwise strict action will be taken against them,” Sukhbir said, adding about 2.5 lakh applications were received for regularisation of illegal colonies and it took time to process these applications.
In order to clear the backlog of pending applications and to give another opportunity to people for applying under the scheme, the government decided to re-enact the Punjab Laws (Special Provisions) Act.
The House also passed the Punjab Development Fund Bill wherein a fund would be set up for the purpose of durable community assets, welfare schemes for dealers, de-addiction and cultural heritage maintenance and development. 25% of fee received from the sale of applications for allotment of liquor vends would be used for this fund. It will involve an amount of Rs 66.83 crore.
Among other bills, which were passed on Wednesday included the Northern India Canal and Drainage (Punjab Amendment) Bill, the Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University Bill, the Punjab Municipal Corporation ( Second Amendment) Bill, and the Punjab Af filiated Colleges (Security of Service) Amendment Bill.