‘Keep record of heritage chairs’

CHANDIGARH: Panjab University has asked 21 of its departments to maintain a record of the number of heritage chairs kept in their buildings since 2011. PU registrar Col GS Chadha (retd) in the chairpersons’ meeting on Thursday asked the departments to start keeping the record.

According to sources, after the matter came up for discussion, librarian Rashmi Yadav highlighted in the meeting that they have not done any record-keeping. However, the registrar said the record should also mention the number of heritage chairs that have been written off. The record of such chairs should have the photograph of the chair and the serial number mentioned on it. On this, a chairperson said that the department usually keeps a record of the written-off chairs, but not of the serial number mentioned them.

This comes after the UT police, last week, had registered a theft case after one of the chairs — part of the heritage furniture designed by architect Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanerette — was seized at the Delhi airport. The chair was marked ‘PUL-116’, signalling that it could belong to the PU library. Following this, PU had asked the UT administration to inform whether the furniture belonged to the university.

Besides this, the cycling model adopted at the Guru Nanak Dev University was also discussed during the meeting to encourage introducing the same culture at the university. The issues related to admissions were also taken up in the meeting.

Sources said that one of the professors raised the issue that due to the late conduct of admissions, the university is losing out on meritorious students who are taking admissions in other institutions. Moreover, director of internal quality assurance cell (IQAC), PU, Prof M Rajivlochan gave a presentation on the best practices by various PU departments, including Dr H S Judge Dental Institute reporting biometric attendance and online registration of patients.

In addition, the department of history has reported that they conduct their internal exam in two days, during class time, thereby saving time that is spent on internal exams. The department of physics spread awareness among students about research opportunities abroad and the police administration reported of their annual blood donation camp as the best practices.