Last Updated on September 11, 2021 at 3:36 pm
The two main universities of Jammu—University of Jammu and the Central University—are being run by caretaker vice chancellors that is reflecting on their functioning.
The ranking of the University of Jammu has slipped to 66th position from last year’s 52 among Indian universities by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2020. This reflects on the falling standards of the university that a few years ago was a leading institution of the north region.
Prof. Manoj Dhar assumed the charge of vice chancellor of the University of Jammu in July 2018 and his three years tenure has already expired but the Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha in his capacity as Chancellor of the university has reportedly not yet initiated the process for selecting the new VC. Autonomy of the University has largely eroded during his tenure, it is alleged.
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Several senior faculty members and non-teaching officials complain that functioning of the university was badly hit due to indecisive attitude of the authorities in appointing a new VC.
They point out that files were piling up under the tenure of Prof. Manoj Dhar as he generally takes extraordinarily long time in disposing the files. Most files are pushed to the finance secretary, who is financial advisor of the university, and these keep shuttling between the university and the civil secretariat.
They also claim that autonomy of the university has been eroded ever since Prof. Dhar became VC as he generally does not himself take routine decisions and sends the files to the secretariat. A new trend of appointing committee after committee to decide on routine files has developed during the tenure of Prof Dhar. Such files were earlier disposed at the level of Registrar. There are incidents of another committee having been constituted to decide on the recommendations of the earlier committee.
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The centre had on 23 July 2021 appointed Prof. Sanjeev Jain as the new Vice Chancellor to replace Prof. Ashok Aima in the Jammu’s Central University. Prof. Jain, a former Vice Chancellor of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University (SMVDU), Katra, has not yet joined and Prof. Aima continues to function as VC of CUJ although his 5 years term had expired in April 2020.
The CUJ has remained in controversies on the issue of appointments but the centre has yet to take notice of the happenings.
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