Admission process to start, IKG-PTU still sans VC, Registrar

Deepkamal Kaur

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 30

The state government as well as the bureaucracy managing the IK Gujral Punjab Technical University seems to be in no mood to appoint either a Vice Chancellor or a Registrar. The admission process to various professional courses, including BTech, BPharmacy, BArchitecture, MBA, MCA and MTech courses, is all set to begin now.

It has been more than a year now that the varsity, which has nearly 150 colleges across Punjab and over 2,000 students enrolled in distance education programme, is working without regular officials on the two top posts. The insiders believe that the government was finding it easier to operate the university via Secretary Technical Education Rakesh Verma, holding the charge of Vice Chancellor since February 28, 2015 and officiating Registrar Amanpreet Singh.

There could be no consensus for the candidature for the post of Vice Chancellor between the selection committee headed by Chief Secretary Sarvesh Kaushal and Technical Education Minister Madan Mohan Mittal. The file pertaining to the issue was said to be pending in the office of Punjab Chief Minister for the past four months.

With regards to the post of Registrar too, there has been no headway. An interview of the shortlisted candidates was held by a committee three months ago at Chandigarh but the members shared that they had so far not found any suitable candidate for the same and the matter was still hanging. The post of Registrar fell vacant after Dr HS Bains left on January 24, 2015.

Dean Dr NP Singh, whose services were recently restored by the top officials in the December 11 meeting of the Board of Governors, too has been reportedly not given any charge since the last one month.

Senior officials in the campus confide that the government as well as the bureaucracy felt that it was easier to handle the campus this way than to have an autonomously working VC, especially in the light of ongoing vigilance and CBI inquiries against the former VC Dr Rajneesh Arora. The government also requires the services of its suitable officers to handle the issue of transfer of Rs 550 crore corpuses to Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University in mind, which was currently stayed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, especially since the matter was facing revolt from within the staff and needs to be handled carefully.

Principal Secretary Technical Education MP Singh said, “I am not updated about the status of the file regarding VC’s appointment. I think it should be in the CM office.”