UGC Refutes JNU VC's Claim of Receiving Funding For New Engineering School

Jawaharlal Nehru University's Vice-Chancellor M Jagdesh Kumar, in an interview with the national daily The Pioneer, has claimed that his plan to introduce a new school of Engineering in the university, has received the approval and a funding of Rs 180 crore from the Universities Grants Commission, the nodal Central agency for funding of educational institutions. He added that the new school will also start enrolling students for 2018-19 batch through a joint entrance examination. But a Right to Information reply by the commission refutes such claims made by the Vice-Chancellor. The reply stated that the commission has not disbursed any funds to the University for the Creation of the new school.

Kumar, who was in controversy for making attendance compulsory for the students, had tossed the idea of new school amidst the academic council debate. He had added that the course will be inter-disciplinary in nature, where students will be learning engineering subjects in first four years and social sciences and humanities in the fifth year.

"The School of Engineering will have two streams-’Computer Science’ and ‘Electronics and Communication Engineering’ and will admit 50 students in each stream for this year. The number of intakes is to be gradually increased in subsequent years," he had said.

“The combination of science and humanities/social science would be a powerful one and would provide a variety of options in terms of subjects. For an example, it could be a B. Tech in Computer Science and Masters in Computational Linguistics or Masters in Korean Studies,” The Pioneer quoted Kumar as saying.

UGC refutes claims of funding

Universities Grants Commission, in a right to information reply, refuted the claims of allocation of Rs 180 crore. The story was published by the thewire.in. The commission added that it had agreed to the proposal of setting up an engineering school "in principle". The reply further emphasised that the commission had asked the university officials to come up with a detailed plan after getting requisite permissions from the academic and executive councils. But the JNU officials have not submitted the plan yet. The new finding also suggests that new school may not see the light of the day with the beginning of the new session in July.

The documents enclosed with the reply stated that JNU applied for a fund allocation of Rs 123 crore in September last year, but left the allocation columns blank. The commission had told the university to apply with all requisite documents. But it failed to file the same after six months.

It is also interesting to note that the commission, apart from funds, has not also approved any faculty positions for the school. In order to realise the ambitious dream of the Vice-Chancellor, the university also diverted 12 faculty positions from existing schools. The move triggered anguish among the teachers of the university who alleged that their centres will be deprived of resources for VC's own agenda. They added even the proposal to create new school was passed in the most undemocratic way.

A disturbing trend

JNU has been on the boil after the students demanded a revision of the decision of seat cuts by more than a thousand for the research courses, in December 2016. But a closer look at the functioning of the vice chancellor suggests that he allegedly peddled lies to ensure implementation of his agenda. The students of the university alleged that only selective minutes of subsequent meetings of the Academic Council have been made available to the public. The agenda put by dissenting members of the council have not been placed in the minutes. Thus, giving readers an impression that no opposing remarks were made in the meeting.

By opting such modus operandi, the proposals of reducing the number of seats in research courses and discontinuance of deprivation points were passed. Deprivation points allowed the students of marginalised communities and backward regions to get some additional marks to enable their admission to the university.

In a similar fashion, the university administration called 271st meeting of the Executive Council. Later, the meeting was cancelled and members were asked for their opinions on the agenda of compulsory attendance. To many people's surprise, the university administration called for a 272nd meeting of the executive council and affirmed that the agenda of compulsory attendance was passed.

The new revelation made by RTI reply suggests that Jagadesh Kumar has failed to bring dissenting groups on board for discussions and is thus resorting to lies to save his face.