BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha University of Health Sciences (OUHS) has found itself at the centre of yet another controversy. The university, which is celebrating its second foundation day on Sunday, has allegedly been conducting examinations in health institutions that lack proper affiliation, raising serious questions about the validity of the tests and the degrees awarded.
Sources said less than 10 per cent of around 369 medical and health institutions have full affiliation for 2025-26. The rest, however, operate either on consent of affiliation (COA) or ‘conditional’ COA, pending the outcome of inspections.
The state has 17 medical colleges, two dental and four each homeopathy and ayurvedic colleges, 261 nursing and 51 pharmacy colleges, besides 30 allied health sciences institutions offering medical laboratory technology courses. However, only four medical and two homeopathy colleges had full affiliation of the university for 2024-25 and the remaining were under COA or conditional COA.
In response to an RTI query, the university admitted that there was no provision in OUHS Act and statute under which examination can be conducted in non-affiliated colleges. If the colleges are not affiliated, will the exams and the results be valid, academicians questioned.
They argued that COA and conditional COA are merely temporary arrangements and do not equate to formal affiliation. Despite this, the university has reportedly allowed examinations to be conducted in these institutions, in blatant violation of the Odisha University Act and its statute.
As per section 34 of the Act, institutions affiliated to any other university are deemed to be disaffiliated from the date the OUHS comes into effect and the affiliation is transferred to the health university. But since most of the institutions were running without full affiliation previously, it could not be transferred.
“A crisis erupted for admission of students for the 2023-24 session after the university started functioning. As no institution had full affiliation, the authorities had then granted conditional COA on submission of affidavits to obtain full affiliation subject to inspection,” said the sources.
The sources said, the OUHS authorities should have inspected such institutions in a time-bound manner by constituting five-member local enquiry committees (LECs) and provided affiliation before conducting examinations.
Vice-chancellor Prof Manash Ranjan Sahoo said, “Since OUHS is a new university, there were no LECs. Now zone-wise LECs have been formed to complete the inspection process as soon as possible,” he said.