Gauhati University: Groping in the dark

But 60 years later, Gauhati University, the first centre of higher education in the entire Northeast, is literally groping in the dark, with the Government not only failing to solve its burgeoning problems but also struggling to find a permanent vice-chancellor to lead it. Ironically, the university is scheduled to celebrate its diamond jubilee this year.

The university has been passing through a difficult phase for nearly four years now. It began with a CBI inquiry into financial irregularities committed during the past decade or so.

After the then vice-chancellor, G N Talukdar, was unceremoniously booted out in September 2006, the then Governor (and the university’s Chancellor) Ajai Singh personally handpicked renowned physicist Amarjyoti Choudhury to take up the top post. Choudhury soon found it a difficult task, especially with the state Government allegedly refusing to help him pull the university out of the morass. While he came up with a Rs 100-crore vision document to revamp the university, apart from seeking help from the state Government to tide over an acute financial crisis, he only landed up exchanging words with then education minister Ripun Bora (who is right now in Tihar Jail after being arrested while allegedly trying to bribe a CBI official to reportedly erase his name from a murder case).

The university, meanwhile, is sinking into a deep financial crisis. While it requires Rs 42 crore to meet its normal annual expenditure, the state Government provides only Rs 26 crore per annum. The result: No new developmental project has been taken up in the past five-six years, employees are not getting their pensions, provident funds and gratuity, buildings and hostels are in bad shape due to non-maintenance, 100 posts of teachers are lying vacant.

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