HYDERABAD: A row between the University of Hyderabad’s administration and a group of faculty and students’ union led to an abrupt cancellation of the inauguration ceremony of School for Earth and Environment Sciences here on Saturday.
UoH planned to upgrade University Centre for Earth and Space Sciences (UCESS) to a separate school and planned its inauguration on Saturday, but following stiff resistance from the students’ union and a group of faculty members, the UoH officials cancelled it in last minute and organised a foundation day lecture by Dr Shailesh Nayak, secretary to Union Ministry of Earth Science on the same occasion.
According the president of UOH students’ union, Vincent Benny, the issue has already been discussed in the Academic Council Meeting and the council advised not to inaugurate it as the UCESS doesn’t have enough resources to meet UGC norms. “The UCESS currently has only five faculty members, but the University Grand Commission (UGC) norms need at least seven of them for the upgradation,” said a senior professor from UoH.
However, the vice-chancellor, Ramakrishna Ramaswamy had reportedly decided to go ahead with his decision. Vincent alleged that the approval of the upgradation of UCESS by Executive Council (EC) was a result of manipulation and the rules have been ignored in the process.
The proposal for upgrading UCESS was placed in the 155th EC meeting and the officials were directed to send it back to the 69th Academic Council Meet for further discussion. However, it was not sent to Academic Council, instead it was again placed in the 158th EC meet and obtained approval, Vincent said.
Currently, the University doesn’t have any uniform guidelines to upgrade academic centres to schools. “We are still working on the common guidelines for upgradation,” said Prof Krishna, in-charge registrar.
The University’s appeal to UGC for additional staff for UCESS has also not been addressed yet.