Hitches mar 62nd PU convocation

Amidst the distribution of degrees,there was a sudden chaos when16 students were made to break the queue and go backstage. Talking to Newsline,one of the students said,“While on stage to collect my degree,I was told that I had not filled in my attendance and so I cannot be given the degree at the convocation. But I have been here since yesterday,I was here at the practice and today I filled in my attendance well in time”.

There were others as well from the same slot of faculty of languages who faced the same problem. Another student said,“Some of the students who were accommodated in the queue had not attended the practice and so were not registered for the convocation. It took the authorities about an hour to search for our degrees”.

Another student,Neha Sethi,who had received a Master’s Degree said,“We were awarded the graduation degrees in a blue coloured leather envelope. Today they just laminated the degrees and gave them to us. My graduation degree seems better”.

Professor Romila Thapar,an emeritus professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,Professor Ashoke Sen,FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society),a noted theoretical physicist known for his contributions in the string field theory and Professor MS Raghunathan,FRS,currently the head of the Department of Mathematics at IIT Mumbai,were awarded the degrees of Honoris Causa by the Vice Chancellor of the university,Arun Kumar Grover,for their contributions in their respective fields.

Congratulating the awardees on the occasion,the Union Minister said,“Our country has a greater percentage of young people and most of them are not aware of the power they have to make a difference. The challenge for them is to find out the ways in which their energies and knowledge can be channelized in a constructive manner”.

Taking to the journalists of the city,the minister said that there are about 11 bills for reforms in the education sector which are in the Parliament regarding the enhancing of the quality of education in the universities. “Out of these bills,three of the bills – the Tribunals Bill,Accreditation Bill and Unfair Practices Bill are likely to be introduced. The Foreign Education Providers Bill has already been introduced.”

The Minister also talked about the Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA),a project on the lines of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for higher education which was introduced in the union budget in 2013. “We have an objective that the state-funded universities which do not have enough funds to hire faculty and the students from a low income family cannot afford admissions in state-funded universities like Panjab University to be provided with additional funds on condition that they will carry out development in the university,” said the minister. In the 12th five year plan,Rs 25,000 crore has been sanctioned to the entire project. The conditions include quality of teachers and encouragement of accreditation.

PU-VC Prof AK Grover threw light on the ongoing projects as well as proposed plans for streamlining the academics and research in the university. Some of the plans included integrated graduate and Honours School beginning with undergraduate and leading up to research,adequate residential accommodation to research scholars and visiting scientists,corporate-academia partnership which is already underway through creation of a knowledge cluster with the help of a grant of Rs 1 crore from the MPLADS funds courtesy of the Union Minister for Railways,Pawan Kumar Bansal and a shuttle bus service connecting all institutes in Chandigarh affiliated to PU.