BHUBANESWAR: SIKSHA ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) University today said the deemed varsity status was granted to it as per the UGC Act.
In a clarification, the university said the deemed university status was granted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2007 under Section 3 of the UGC Act.
The deemed university status was renewed for three years after physical verification of its infrastructure, faculty strength and intake capacity following recommendation of a review committee of the UGC in August, 2009.
Prior to the visit of the UGC review committee, a team of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), headed by Chandra Sekhar Setty, visited the university in April, 2009, and accredited it with Grade ‘A’ for five years from September 30, 2009. Only two, including SOA, out of 19 universities of the State were accredited with ‘A’ grade, a spokesperson of the university said.
Countering the charge that the Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), the engineering college under SOA university, does not have the required infrastructure and teaching staff, the university said the UGC and the NAAC teams were fully satisfied on both counts.
The university further clarified that admission to the engineering college was done as per procedures laid down by the Government.
Responding to MHRD’s objection to the deemed status of SOA, the university said the view was based on the objections raised by the Tandon Committee on research programmes and publications by the faculty members. The committee found that the number of research programmes and publications is less than required.
The varsity has, however, filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in which it clarified that the Tandon Committee had wrongly quoted the number of Ph.D scholars and research papers published.