Boston blot on PU

The shock did not end here. What emerged from a quick check made the university authorities indefinitely ban foreign exchange study tours and exchange programmes. Also,the university told its students that all those wanting to apply for such trips would have to follow rigid procedural steps including scrutiny of application at level of department as well as by the Dean University Instructions office.

As it turned out,Nitin Jindal,a student at PUs University Institute of Legal Studies UILS,was part of a delegation,which varsity authorities said,was not the official one. The officials passed the buck to Students Council,which too had sent a group to the seminar. But the council too washed its hands of the issue,saying Jindal had registered and gone on his own to the seminar. Soon after,the chairperson at UILS went to the extent of saying that Jindal was not even its student.

It then came to light that four delegations of students had gone to the seminar,representing PU. They had claimed themselves to be students from University Law School,University Institute of Legal Studies,PU and University Institute of Law. Significantly,only one of the groups had official patronage,and the rest were formed by the students using department names which do not even exist at the university.

In all 73 students from the varsity had gone to the seminar,including the 21-member official delegation.

PU authorities admitted the students had faked the names of departments as no such schools like University Law School and the University Institute of Law exist at the varsity.

Prof R C Sobti,Vice-Chancellor,Panjab University,said,We have formed a committee to look into the matter and have asked them for their recommendations. Based on its report,the guilty would be taken to task. Also,we have issued showcause notices to those students who used the varsitys name to go to the seminar. Action would be taken if we are not satisfied with their explanations.

However,the students say they did not break any rule. A student at UILS who had gone in the University Law School delegation said,I am surprised at the attitude of the authorities. I am a bonafide student at the varsity and the seminar organisers had no conditions at all for applying. All that was required was to get registered online and to give a name to our group if we had any. I believe the varsity authorities should have clarified and then taken a decision of filing a police complaint or issuing showcause notices.

The varsity has been sending its students to the seminar for the past four years but they have no clue as to how the students have been going. Enquiries should have been made four years ago if varsity authorities were so concerned. They kept allowing and now when there is some issue they want to wash their hands of the entire incident and are blaming students, added another student.

Prof Naval Kishore,Dean,Students Welfare,said,This is perhaps the first such incident where the varsity had to cut a sorry figure at the international level. We are working on making rules strict at the varsity so that no one in future gets to defame PUs name like this.

That is the reason we have temporarily banned study tours as we are working on having a rigorous procedure for all those interested in going for study tours, he added.