BEd colleges under scrutiny

The affiliation of over 15,000 colleges is to be reviewed following PMO's intervention, writes Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Apr 28, 2006, 16:28:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The affiliation of the country's over 15,000 BEd colleges is to set to be reviewed following the PMO's intervention.

This comes after there were complaints from many states — especially Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal — about the functioning and proliferation of private teacher-training institutes.

Recently, Uttar Pradesh Governor T.V. Rajeshwar had alleged that several institutes had been given affiliation without proper inspection and the result was the creation of commercial education centres.

In West Bengal, the future of thousands of students is in jeopardy as the state high court has ordered the closure of institutes which do not have the mandatory affiliation from the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE). In Bihar many NCTE-affiliated institutes are said to be there just for issuing certificates.

During the regime of chairperson Professor Sardindu, the NCTE was said to have turned a deaf ear towards such complaints. In March, the Human Resource Development Ministry had sacked Sardindu.

"The Rajasthan HC imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 on him for telling a lie but he had still continued at helm of affairs," said R.P. Singh, president of the All India Association of Teacher's Education. "We took up the issue with the PMO and action was taken."

Singh said that there had been large-scale corruption in giving affiliation to private BEd colleges. In one district in Uttar Pradesh, 75 new BEd colleges were given affiliation in two years. Meerut University has about 170 BEd colleges, said Singh.

Now, things seem to be finally moving at the NCTE. "We've directed all regional offices to find out which institutes are running without inspection and to review the process of inspection in the suspect institutions," said S.K. Thakur, acting chairperson, NCTE. A schedule of inspection will be ready in a few days.

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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