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Engg students threaten to agitate on affiliation issue
First it was the medicos ofKM School of Postgraduate
Medicine and Research who went on strike
early this week and now it is the students of LD Engineering College who
are sitting outside the Gujarat University (GU), threatening to goon indefinite
strike. The reason is the same. Many courses conducted in these colleges
are not recognized by either the All-India body or the Gujarat University.
The recent pretests have
exposed a fact that many Government colleges in the State are not conducting
recognized courses. Gandhinagar-based Government Engineering college faced
the same problem last year when merely a day before the final exam, the
students were told that they could not appear for the examinations as
the courses were not granted affiliation by the Gujarat University.
This year, 66-odd First Year
In- formation Technology ( FYIT) students who are in the first batch
of LD Engineering are facing the same situation.. With one month to go
for their annual examinations, they have been told that the course has
still not been given affiliation by GO even though the All-India Council
of Technical Education (AICTE) has granted affiliation, due to which the
students are not being allowed to appear for the examination. "The
university is literally playing with our lives of which they have no right
to," lashes an agitated Mihir Patel, a FYlT student.
General Secretary of LD college
Maulin Shah informed that three post graduate courses, ME (Trans Management)
and ME (Electronics) were granted affiliation two years back, but because
of GU’s careless attitude, these courses are still not recognized. "We
did not know these courses were not recognized," until the problem of
FYIT students came up. For years, many students have been doing the course
and receiving the mark-sheet L or degree without the knowledge that this
course is not recognized," says Neelkamal Parikh, a Final year student
who wants to pursue ME (Transportation).
The resident doctors of KM
School came to realize that many PG courses were not recognized when a
gold-medallist from the college was denied job on the basis of degree
without recognition. It took a regula tion by the Medical Council of India
(MCI) for the students to realize they were pursuing courses that were
not recognized. We slog for years to be told that it doesn’t matter. This
can be disappointing for the students," said Dr Sanjay Rathore, member
of the KM School student committee.
The Engineering students
allege that the university is helping the self-financed colleges who are
openly given affiliation overnight, but institutes like LD which are older
than the GU building are still forced to ‘hang in mid-air’. "Just
because we study in Government-run colleges doesn’t mean the university
can take us for a ride," said Shah. From the time Shah informed Pro V-C
Chaitanya Khambolja about the problem he has been avoiding a meeting.
Minister for Higher and Technical Education Bharat Barot discarded the
allegations and instead stated that the State Government has tried to
encourage affiliations. In a press statement, Barot said that the media
reports are trying to malign the Government which has no direct connection
with the University.
Republished from The Asian Age
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