According to the HEFA funding pattern, DU will have to repay the loan in 20 half-yearly installments in 10 years. (File) Delhi University’s Executive Council (EC) Friday approved the seeking a loan of over Rs 1,000 crore from the Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA). However, there were three dissents from members of the EC.
“We will take funding of Rs 1,075.40 crore from HEFA. It has been decided. Apart from this, many courses of the School of Open Learning were approved. We will now offer MBA, BBA etc. These are the important decisions which were taken today,” said Registrar Vikas Gupta.
According to the agenda of the meeting, the HEFA loan is to be taken for infrastructure development and creation of capital assets. According to the HEFA funding pattern, DU will have to repay the loan in 20 half-yearly installments in 10 years.
The university said it has been receiving a very limited allocation for creation of capital assets for the last three to five years and has been unable to purchase lab equipment. It also cited the condition of buildings that are in a dilapidated state. The Education Ministry has already said that major infrastructure projects will be funded through HEFA only and no funds will be released as budgetary support.
In their dissent note, however, the three EC members – Advocate Ashok Agarwal, Seema Das and Rajpal Singh Pawar – said they “strongly opposed” the move.
“This will convert our public funded university from a grant based model to loan based model of financing and lead the university to a situation of ‘debt trap’. We strongly oppose this dangerous movement towards privatisation and steep hike in the fees of the students,” they said.
“Education is a philanthropic activity and any such loan is unacceptable. We therefore, oppose the proposal of loan from HEFA and record our dissent on this agenda item,” they said.
(With PTI inputs)
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