UGC rushes to set up teacher education centre in BHU

NEW DELHI: Seemingly in a hurry to please the HRD ministry, UGC has decided to set up an Inter-University Centre (IUC) for teacher education at Banaras Hindu University. The proposal has not been discussed academically even once but UGC is in such a rush that it sent the agenda for setting up IUC to members on Monday, asking them to give their approval by Wednesday, failing which the commission said it may “presume your kind concurrence”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents Varanasi in Lok Sabha.
The full commission is meeting on December 22 and IUC proposal has been sent much after the full agenda for the meeting was decided. UGC has even prepared the Memorandum of Association of the proposed IUC. The IUC council has got names of UGC chairperson Ved Prakash, vice-chairperson H Devaraj, secretary Jaspal S Sandhu, HRD secretary Satya N Mohanty, BHU VC GC Tripathi, university registrar KP Upadhyay, NCTE chairperson Santosh Panda and UGC joint secretary Manju Singh. An expenditure of over Rs 60 crore has been projected for IUC.
In case of the proposed IUC in BHU, UGC has said it is being set up as per the recommendations by a committee headed by AK Sharma, former NCERT director. But Sharma committee specifically recommended Andhra Pradesh so that IUC on teacher education can be established in Kakinada. It never mentioned Banaras. But UGC on its own has concluded that “demography and teacher education requirements of the northern and eastern states of the country need to be addressed through an institutional mechanism on priority, for which setting up of another IUC for teacher education is a sustainable choice”.
Only last July, UGC had set up IUC for teacher education in Kakinada, constituency of former HRD minister MM Pallam Raju. So far, UGC has not even been able to appoint a director for the institute. Many members had protested setting up of IUC on teacher education in Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University. Yogendra Yadav was unceremoniously removed as member of UGC, ostensibly for his opposition to the manner in which IUC was being set up in Kakinanda.