Deemed varsities: Centre mulls apt mechanism to protect students

New Delhi: The HRD ministry, which has sought denotification of 44 deemed universities, will put in place a suitable mechanism to ensure that the future of students is not affected. It has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court and the matter is likely to come up for hearing on Wednesday.[caption id=“attachment_1251671” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Protecting interest of students. Getty Images[/caption] “At stake is the future of more than two lakh students. We will put a mechanism ensuring that their future is not affected if the apex court denotifies these institutes,” a senior official in the ministry said. Observing that the 44 deemed universities, classified as category C institutions, have no scope left for improvement in their functioning, the affidavit had said the “Supreme Court may be pleased to issue an appropriate order it deems fit to enable the government to denotify the 44 institutes”. A committee of officers constituted by the ministry had concluded that these institutes should be denotified after it gave personal notice to each university to come clean. It had examined the findings of a review committee headed by PN Tandon which had recommended blacklisting these 44 institutions as they had failed on several parameters. The nine parameters on which the 44 institutions were tested included conformity to UGC guidelines, aspects of governance, innovations in teaching, research output and impact, doctoral and research programmes, faculty resources, admission processes, award of degrees, among others. The Tandon Committee had initially examined all 126 deemed universities in the country and classified them into three categories A, B and C. While the 44 fell in category C, those in category A and B were allowed to continue. The affidavit has highlighted section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956 which includes powers to withdraw such declaration (the deemed status) if an institution fails to meet the standards that are elaborately laid down in the Act. PTI