Farmers, wards to get reservation in agri varsity courses

SHIMLA: Palampur-based Himachal Pradesh Agricultural University (HPAU) on Thursday proposed to reserve 20% seats over and above quota for the farmers and wards of farmers in BSc agriculture and BVSc and animal husbandry courses.
HPAU vice-chancellor K K Katoch said that board of directors (BoD) of the university had approved this proposal on Thursday and university would now forward the proposal for the approval of state government.He said that university intends to introduce this reservation for the farmers and their wards from next academic session.
"But much would depend on the government," he said. Interacting with mediapersons at Shimla after the BoD meeting of the varsity, Katoch said that persons, who have total dependence on agriculture for income, would be considered for this reservation..
Katoch said that BoD has also decided to curtail routine expenditure and raise the income of the university. The university proposed to raise its annual income from Rs 10.5 crores to Rs 35 xrores over a period of 10 years.
For the next academic session, the prospectus of the university for various entrance examinations would be available online thus saving it around Rs 6-7 lakh. It would also commercialize its technical services and start the system of having oral exams and viva through video-conferencing to cut short expenses on TA/DA of the experts. Three units of video-conferencing would be established in the varsity. "It would help the university engage experts from outside the country too," he added.
HPAU had already set up central purchase and disposal unit to curtail expenditures and bring accountability. Its logo for all the products had been changed from Palam to HimPalam as Palam was already registered in Gujarat. He said that keeping in view the global angle, the logo on the letter head of the university would henceforth be used in Hindi as well as English. "It is CSKHPKV in Hindi and it would be CSKHAPU in English," he said.
Katoch said the stipend of the students of the varsity who go for industrial training and rural awareness in the last year had been increased from Rs 1,500 to 2,500 per month (agriculture), Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per month (home science) and Rs 3,000-4,500 for (veterinary sciences). He said an international coordination cell was being established for exchange of students and the varsity had decided to implement the scientist recruitment board (ICAR) scorecard for screening and appointments of scientists, henceforth.
Keeping in view the demand, HPAU proposed to start a veterinary pharmacists training institute. "We will send the proposal for the approval of the state government. We wish to open it in Una, but the same would be finalized by the government." He said that BoD had given approval to promotion of 92 teachers. In all, 250 teachers and 91 non-teachers had been promoted in last year.