Infrastructure missing, but 5 univs still got deemed status

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has zeroed in on five deemed universities that have inadequate infrastructure but were still approved for the status by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

Updated on: Jul 9, 2009, 01:24:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has zeroed in on five deemed universities that have inadequate infrastructure but were still approved for the status by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

There are 127 deemed universities in India, of which the majority got the status in the last five years.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal told Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that the ministry has found out that some of the institutions that applied for deemed university status had adequate infrastructure to get the status.

Although functionally, deemed and other universities are almost same, institutions get deemed status under the UGC Act while others are governed through their independent laws.

“So far, in five universities, there are glaring short-comings,” a government official who was not willing to be quoted said.

The deficiencies include not enough faculty, as prescribed in the UGC guidelines, and inadequate infrastructure for quality teaching. However, the ministry is not willing to give the names of the universities till its review is complete.

Sibal has already said that students in deemed universities whose status is withdrawn will not be affected. They will be enrolled as students of the universities to which the deemed universities were earlier affiliated to before getting the special status.

Before taking action, the ministry will wait for a report on the review of all deemed universities from the UGC, likely to be submit by August 28.

The ministry has prescribed a seven-stage process to review the universities, including inspection of campuses by a team of experts.

A senior UGC official, who was not willing to be quoted, said the inspections teams have been constituted and many of them have initiated the review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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