Proposed medical varsity to eat up HPU revenue

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, February 20

The state government’s move to set up a medical education university for regulating all medical educational institutions will further dent the revenue of Himachal Pradesh University (HPU), which is already facing acute financial crunch.

After setting up the new university, all medical, dental, ayurveda, nursing, pharmacy and other educational institutions, which are at present affiliated to HPU, will be affiliated to medical education university. Besides, affiliation fee and course approval fee, being charged by HPU, will go to the new university.

There are over 50 medical, dental, ayurveda and pharma colleges functional in the state and after setting up the university, these institutions and more institutions in the pipeline will deem to be affiliated to it.

“The move will not serve any purpose and only put additional financial burden and if the government, instead of setting up this medical university, provides 50 per cent of the funds required for the new university to HPU, it will go a long way in strengthening and expansion of the university,” said a top official of HPU on condition of anonymity.

The setting up of Himachal Pradesh Technical University, Hamirpur, had also affected HPU as all technical, pharma and management institutes, affiliated to HPU, were brought under the domain of HPTU and disaffiliated from HPU. Further, a cluster university is also coming up in Mandi under RUSA (Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan) and after the university becomes functional, the colleges, including private B.Ed colleges in Mandi, Kullu and Bilaspur areas will be affiliated to it and HPU will further suffer more revenue loss. Not only HPU, the two farm universities are also facing financial crunch. “The move is not bad as HPU has become too unwieldy and not able to effectively regulate and inspect the colleges affiliated to it but instead of opening a new university, a professional university to govern all engineering, medical, dental, management and other professional institutions would have been a better option,” said Prof NK Sharda, a former Pro Vice-Chancellor of HPU.