Announced years ago, Solan rural colleges yet to get campuses

Ambika Sharma

Solan, September 9

Announced years ago, government colleges in Dharampur, Jainagar and Darlaghat in Solan district are yet to get permanent campuses and other infrastructure.

The colleges were announced with the aim of providing higher education facilities in rural areas. But due to government apathy, classes of only humanities stream have been started, that too on make-shift basis. Science stream classes couldn’t be started in these colleges due to paucity of space.

The colleges in Jainagar and Darlaghat of the Arki Assembly segment were announced in 2016-17 fiscal by the Congress-led government. At that time, an amount of Rs 5 crore was approved for the construction of college buildings. But the campuses are yet to come up.

Arki MLA Sanjay Awasthy said, “A total of 43.1 bighas were transferred to the Education Department for the Darlaghat college years ago. An amount of Rs 2.8 crore was provided to the Public Works Department (PWD) but the revised estimate hasn’t been approved yet. As of now, work on the college building hasn’t started.”

He said though the college has been declared a College of Excellence, the posts of a principal and six lecturers had been lying vacant in the institute for the past several months.

The college in Jainagar has also been hit by red tape. A total of 35.6 bighas of forest land has been selected for the project at Kathla. The application for clearing the land under the Forest Clearance Act, 1980, was sent to the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change on July 27 last year. But it is still pending as various queries of the ministry had not been addressed.

Moreover, only Rs 9.2 lakh has been provided to the PWD for the construction of the college building against Rs 5 crore that was approved.

The college at Dharampur in Kasauli was announced again during the present BJP regime in 2012. The previous Congress regime had announced the college in 2016-17 fiscal.