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Central status for Panjab University sought

CHANDIGARH: Three different representations seeking Central University status for Panjab University were submitted to Union Minister of State for Finance and Parliamentary Affairs Pawan Kumar Bansal here on Saturday.

In its representation, the Panjab University Teachers’ Association said that for the past three months teachers, students and other staff had been sitting on chain fast on the campus demanding Central University status. The Punjab Government was sleeping over the offer of Central status to the University by the Centre for the last one year and had “not moved despite our efforts to expedite the process,” PUTA Secretary Manjit Singh said while urging Mr. Bansal to speed up “the process at the level of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office.”

In another memorandum submitted by PUSU president T. S. Cheema, Mr. Bansal was apprised of the way in which tuition fees had shot up during the past few years and gone beyond the reach of most students and parents. New professional courses were being started to make up the budgetary deficit and the parents were facing the music as they had to pay through their nose.

In the representation submitted by the research scholars, led by Sumittar Singh Walia and B. Alaxai, Convener and Co-convener of the ad hoc committee of research scholars respectively, the Minister, who represents Chandigarh in the Lok Sabha, was told that the demand for Central status to Panjab University was a legitimate demand as it was the only alternative to reduce the financial burden on the students and their parents. “Moreover, when the whole country had been given 30 Central universities, why should Chandigarh be discriminated?” they asked.

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