Nagpur University panel okays affiliation to over 100 colleges, courses without discussion

NAGPUR: Nagpur University's Academic Council (AC) on Thursday cleared proposals of affiliation of over 100 colleges and courses without any discussion. These include ME/MTech courses which were in the eye of the storm for granting illegal admissions to students before getting affiliation from NU. Surprisingly, none of the 90 members made efforts to go through Local Enquiry Committee (LEC) reports of these colleges/courses and cleared them with a voice vote. Even the administration led by NU VC Vilas Sapkal cleared proposals under apparent pressure of members mostly from private college managements, NU officials disclosed.

They added that though the marathon meeting lasted for nearly ten hours, the members gave very little time to issues like affiliation of colleges. A majority of these colleges and courses lack even the basic infrastructure, facilities and many of them are operating without even a single regular teacher. Registrar Ashok Gomase confirmed that affiliation to many colleges was cleared but he didn't remember the numbers. He diverted all queries to Board of College and University Development (BCUD) director Arvind Chaudhary who refused to take the calls.

Some senior members, who are also principals of renowned colleges, pressured the administration to include names of contributory teachers into LEC when they visit the colleges. The proposal was accepted by the VC which, according to NU officials, is not as per norms. "On the one hand, UGC and AICTE were stressing on regular teachers for enhancing quality and on the other, NU is giving green signal for colleges to indulge in illegality by showing contributory teachers as full time lecturers," an official lamented.

Arts, commerce and science fees to be doubled

The AC also okayed a proposal to double the fees of arts, commerce and science courses under apparent pressure of college managements. The proposal will, of course, have to be okayed by the Management Council (MC) too but is expected to sail through as a majority of members represent private colleges, NU officials claimed. The registrar confirmed that the proposal was cleared in AC.

However, NU was stopped from raising the exam fees after fierce opposition by pharmacy dean Pramod Yeole. NU administration had demanded doubling of the exam fees by implementing the decision of October 2007 Management Council which was kept in abeyance following large scale protests by the students.

Yeole demanded a white paper before the fee hike, citing Rs 60 crore revenue in audit report. He stated that if NU was spending only Rs 15 crore out of this amount on exams, there was no need to hike the fees. NU administration defended the decision stating that they spent remaining amount on renovation of hostels and its 40 departments. After Yeole's protests, however, NU decided to publish a white paper in its next meeting in March.

Source:TOI