With the aim of tackling allegations of corruption, the Department of Higher Education has said that syndicate members should not be part of the committees that inspect colleges to grant or renew affiliation.
The department has also said that the committee members should be subject experts.
However, many universities have violated the rule, with sources saying they were ‘under pressure’ to nominate syndicate members to the Local Inquiry Committees, which are expected to visit affiliated colleges and rate them based on the infrastructure and their teaching resources.
Apart from sanctioning permission to colleges, they also recommend if the college should be allowed to start new courses, as well as whether they can enhance the number of seats.
Some universities have welcomed the order and feel that this would help in ensuring that the decisions taken by the universities are transparent.
M. Ramachandra Gowda, Registrar of Bengaluru Central University, said that the move is in the right direction. “The rationale is that the people inspecting a college and those approving the report of the inspection committee should not be the same,” he said.
But he said many syndicate members had challenged the order in court and obtained a stay. Prof Gowda. said that they had sent the matter for legal opinion to see what the university’s stance should be.
In 2017, a member of the executive council of the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) was allegedly caught on CCTV camera demanding a bribe of ₹25 lakh from an engineering college to give a ‘positive’ report. This led to the university coming up with a set of guidelines for committee members to follow during their visits. Some of these measures include not giving gifts or making hotel reservations for these members, and video recording the entire visit to the college.