Hyderabad: Around 50 students from University of Hyderabad as also students from EFLU and Osmania University staged a protest at the regional office of University Grants Commission (UGC) here on Wednesday, dem-anding revocation of what they termed as the “unconstitutional” UGC gazette notification. The recent notification had a list of guidelines thar are allegedly discriminatory, like 100 percent weightage given to Viva for MPhil and PhD admissions. Students say the uniform criteria for qualification in written entrance for all the categories could result in a violation of the constitutionally granted rights of reservation.
Students are also upset over the clause number 6.5 which states that a research supervisor and co-supervisor cannot guide more than three MPhil and eight PhD scholars. An associate professor can guide a maximum of two MPhil and six PhD scholars and an assistant professor can guide up to a maximum of one Mphil and four PhD scholars, which would lead to reduction in the number of seats.
Kuldeep Negi, president of UoH student Union, said, “The students’ union at UoH expresses its opposition to the recent notification as it would curtail admissions to MPhil. & PhD. A top-down imposition from UGC on the universities is detrimental to its existence, as it leads to social exclusion and a significant reduction in the number of seats.’’
“When higher education has to be made more accessible to students from marginalised sections, any move to scuttle the socially-just ad-mission policies of universities like JNU will be strongly resisted and we will fight until the UGC revokes the circular. We condemn the JNU administration’s move to unilaterally impose such a rule, despite opposition from students and faculty. We de-mand that the Centre and UGC expand faculty recruitment for ensuring faculty and student ratio, instead of making universities inaccessible to students from marginalised sections.”he said.
