Agriculture varsity board mgmt submits memorandum to Governor

Eight members of the Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University Board of Management today submitted a memorandum to Chancellor (Governor) to direct the state government to not take over 110 hectares of the university land for the setting up a tourism village on the campus.

The members who signed the letter are Urmil Bhuria, Suresh Chaudhary, Narinder Negi, Ms Mandchali Thakur, Prof Suresh Gautam, Prof Adarash Kumar, Jatinder Sodhi and Prof Pardeep Kumar.

In the memorandum they said while taking over this land, the government should have taken the Board of Management into confidence before taking over the land. They said the no objection certificate issued by the acting Vice-Chancellor for the transfer of the land was also illegal.

In a letter to Chancellor Shiv Partap Shukla, who is also Governor of the state, the members said earlier the university had already spared more than 100 hectares of land for the establishment of Vikram Batra College, Science Museum, Wool Federation Office and a heliport. Now the land with the university is only meant to run the existing four colleges, namely College of Agriculture, College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, College of Community Sciences and College of Basic science.

“With the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, the intake of the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate students is increasing year after year and the existing experimental area is falling short for various scientific field experiments. The proposed area is under development to meet the increasing requirement of students, field experimentation and to sustain dairy farming of the university.

The members said many undergraduate and postgraduate students, especially girls, were living outside the university campus due to the scarcity of hostel accommodation. Hence, more area is required for the construction of hostels for students. Moreover, new colleges and new programmes are to be initiated in different colleges under new education policy, they added.