According to sources in the Hindi department, 90 seats are available for MA admissions. But the majority of the applications are from students of commerce, engineering and other non-humanities faculties.
HAVE applicants but won’t give admissions: this seems to be the stance taken by the Hindi department for its postgraduate seats, which have received scores of applications this year. The department has refused to grant admission to students who didn’t take Hindi as a special subject during graduation, and this is likely to lead to a situation where many available seats could go vacant despite several students applying for them.
According to sources in the Hindi department, 90 seats are available for MA admissions. But the majority of the applications are from students of commerce, engineering and other non-humanities faculties. However, the department officials said these students were not eligible for admission since they had not taken Hindi as their special subject.
The applicants have argued that the department’s stance goes against the rules of the varsity, which allow students from any discipline to take post-graduate admission in any course. “These applicants have been making the rounds of the varsity and arguing that they should be given admissions. But we had specified in the advertisement itself that only students who take Hindi as their special subject during graduation will qualify. That’s the norm being followed for many years. In fact, after these students started protesting, we consulted with the university officials… it has been decided to first fill up the seats as per applications received from eligible students, and then issue an advertisement again,” said head of the department, Sadanand Bhosale.
Admitting that the number of vacant seats was higher than that of eligible students, he said that this wasn’t the first time that seats would go vacant, but the number of applicants this year was more than previous years. “This year, Mumbai University results were declared late and we get a lot of applicants from there. Many other varsities have declared their results late and that’s why students of Hindi or eligible students couldn’t apply in time. When we re-advertise, eligible students who received their results later will also apply. As far as the other students are concerned, they want to prepare for the civil services or similar things, because of which they prefer Hindi post-graduate seats. But we can’t allot seats like that… when they don’t fit the mandatory admission criteria set by the department,” he added.
S M White, head of the eligibility section at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, said the departments at the varsity have academic autonomy and could take such decisions.
