Senate members flay NU for vacant seats in its PG depts

Nagpur: Nagpur University Senate members on Thursday continued their veiled attack against the administration accusing it of deliberately helping private colleges in filling up their postgraduate seats.
The house was then adjourned till Diwali vacations, as the entire agenda could not be finished in the first two days. For most of the meeting, issues not related to the students were discussed on both days. Some of those were related to members’ “personal agendas” and even the administration had complained about it, NU officials told TOI.
NU Physics Department lecturer Omprakash Chimankar earlier pointed out that the administration had conducted a centralized admission procedure (CAP) for only its 40 departments while leaving out affiliated colleges. He said, last year, the university had included the affiliated colleges in the CAP, which significantly helped the students.
Other members informed that NU had also started its CAP late and, by that time, the admissions in private colleges were full, despite the fact that their fees were on a higher side in comparison to the university and majority of them lacked facilities like laboratories and library. They further pointed out that on account of delay, seats in many NU departments were still vacant even after the admission deadline was extended till October 31.
Senior member Rajesh Bhoyar pointed out that if private colleges were benefiting at NU’s expense, the administration should introspect on why students preferred admissions there despite exorbitant fees and incidents of exploitations. “Affiliated colleges cannot be held responsible for seats remaining vacant in the university. I used to come from Wardha to attend college in Nagpur.The department heads need to think on why students turned their back to NU,” he said.
Replying to the discussions, vice chancellor Subhash Chaudhari defended NU’s decision to exclude affiliated colleges from the CAP for postgraduate courses, stating that there were no rules to include them. He said conducting CAP for NU departments was the Management Council’s decision.
Some members told TOI after the meeting that top private colleges had charged lakhs in donations from the students as NU’s CAP was delayed. They said, the students were made to run from one college to another for prospectus and admissions, in absence of centralised admissions.