A government backed audit has suggested that the 142-year old Aligarh Muslim University do away with collages based on gender as well as get rid of admission quotas under the discretion of vice-chancellor.
The audit also suggests that the university merge the Sunni and Shia departments under Theology department for Comparative Religion.
According to a Hindustan Times report, the audit says that “the segregation of boys and girls up to the under-graduate courses in separate boys-only and girls-only college is considered a legacy of the past especially when the workplaces and activities in the real world are gender-neutral”.
In 2014, the then vice-chancellor of AMU, Zameer Uddin Shah had, while turning down a plea to allow female students in the Maulana Azad university libary had said that if he allowed female students there will be "four time more boys".
In the same year, the Allahabad high court had ruled the university's ban on women students' entry to the University's library as 'unconstitutional'.
In 2016, it was alleged that women were barred from enrolling for under-graduate programmes in the AMU main campus.
The audit also mentions that admission quotos, including the ones under the discretion of the AMU vice-chancellor should be abolished and reservations under other catogories be open and be based on merit.
The government had in the last year withdrawn the letters by the UPA government to the university allowing 50 per cent reservation for Muslims in the medicine faculty.
In what could be a let down for many, the audit also suggest that post-graduate and PhD students of AMU take a break of five years before joining the same university as a faculty.
In October 2017, A UGC panel recommended removal of words such as 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' from the names of Banaras Hindu University and Aligarh Muslim University even as Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the suggestion is beyond the committee's mandate.
According to the UGC panel, the universities can be simply called Aligarh University and Banaras University or be renamed after their founders.
Centrally funded universities are secular institutions but such words related to religion in their names do not reflect that character, a panel member said.
Besides Aligarh Muslim Uuniversity and Benares Hindu University, other universities that were audited by the panel included Allahabad University, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University in Uttarakhand, Central University of Jharkhand, Central University of Rajasthan, Central University of Jammu, Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya in Wardha, University of Tripura and Hari Singh Gour University in Madhya Pradesh.
(with PTI inputs)