Govt cracks down on 345 unrecognised colleges

BANGALORE, SEPT 3: Have you heard of colleges being run in single rooms? Or of those, which are run in incomplete three-room buildings wi...

BANGALORE, SEPT 3: Have you heard of colleges being run in single rooms? Or of those, which are run in incomplete three-room buildings with an asbestos roof? Or worse, those which are housed in incomplete one-room tenements of ancient two-room residential houses located in narrow lanes?

If not, travel to far-flung Chitradurga district to witness all this and more. This was exactly what officials of the Pre-University Education Department discovered in their bid to identify institutions being run without adequate infrastructure 8211; and all to make a quick buck.

In all, about 345 PU colleges in the State including about 40 city-based colleges that lacked basic infrastructure facilities and had failed to comply with the stipulations laid down by the Government, while granting permission, have been identified so far.

In the process of identifying such 8220;colleges8221; Board officials also noticed that several colleges that lacked basic infrastructure facilities 8211; were being accommodated in Government school buildings!

Five colleges were housed in the same building and one college, that was found to be non-existent, was occupied by a motor rewinding workshop and a photo studio in Chitradurga! This was not all. Officials also found that 17 PU colleges in the district were virtually run by one family in the guise of four different Trusts.

Such cases were not exclusive to Chitradurga district alone. Officials of the PU directorate also stumbled upon a college in Humnabad taluka of Bidar district which was illegally operating from a Government High School building despite receiving grants from the Government.

These are some of the cases that have come to light during the PU Directorate8217;s crackdown on private PU colleges in the state.

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As part of its efforts to punish erring colleges during the last two years, the Directorate published a list of colleges that have been granted and denied recognition for the academic year 1999.

As soon as the list was published, the Directorate was flooded with applications from college managements seeking time to spruce up these institutions by providing the missing infrastructure facilities.

8220;The applications of nearly 100 colleges who have now complied with the rules have been considered favourably and granted recognition while those of 50 colleges have been rejected. A proposal to withdraw permission to these 50 colleges including 10 based in the city, has been placed before the State Government for approval,8221; PU Director B A Harish Gowda told this paper.

He said the applications from the other colleges were being processed. 8220;The hearings of these college managements have been completed. A final decision is yet to be taken,8221; Gowda said.

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The main objective of the crackdown was to monitor proper functioning of the colleges, he said.

8220;We wanted to evaluate the infrastructure facilities in all these colleges. It was astonishing that several colleges, which were receiving grant-in-aid, had not provided infrastructure facilities. We hope that this will sound a warning and colleges will henceforth comply with Government directives,8221; he added.