Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam   

AU Academic Senate approves Rs. 157.91-cr. budget

VISAKHAPATNAM: Andhra University Academic Senate approved the Rs. 157.91 crores budget estimates for 2008-09, with a deficit of Rs. 22.27 crores, at its meeting here on Wednesday.

Several other issues were discussed and approval granted for new courses, nomenclature of courses, etc.

They also approved the proposal to set up 12 schools by clubbing sister subjects in place of existing campus colleges. The Academic Senate, presided over by Vice-Chancellor L. Venugopal Reddy in principle There was serious discussion on the formation of schools and it was decided that the schools in engineering subjects would be formed without prejudice to the requirements of TEQEP and AICTE after Principal of AU College of Engineering Allam Appa Rao said that receiving grants for the college under phase II of TEQEP would be a problem if schools were there in place of a college.

Prof. Appa Rao, Prof. Krishna Kumari, Prof. V.S.R.K. Prasad and others felt that there could be little advantage with the schools format, the grouping of sister subjects was not done in the proper manner and suggested that the proposal be dropped.

But Prof. Venugopal Reddy defended the proposal and felt that the schools should be set up before the NAAC Peer Committee visited the campus. During the brief discussion on the budget, which was introduced by Executive Council Member I. Muralikrishna Rao, Prof. Venugopal Reddy explained that the block grant from the State Government would be Rs. 77.25 crores only and with a likely additional allotment of 12 per cent (amounting to Rs. 9 crores to Rs. 9.5 crores) the salary bill would be taken care of. But the university had to bear the Rs. 32 crores pension bill and maintenance expenses on its own.

Some suggestions received to meet the bill included hiking the various fees. Responding to the urgent need expressed by the members to undertake repairs to the departments’ buildings the Vice-Chancellor said the maintenance of buildings could be taken care of with a grant of Rs. 5 crores to Rs. 10 crores the UGC was planning to release to each of the old universities. The Academic Senate passed a unanimous resolution appreciating Prof. Venugopal Reddy for his successful tenure which also included conducting National Congress of commerce, economics and science and securing and getting renewed the ISO certificate for the university.

Rector B. Satyanarayana, Registrar P. Vijaya Prakash, EC Members and university officials were also present along with Academic Senate Members.

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