Wednesday, Jun 16, 2010
Holds meeting with Vice-Chancellor and officials after looking at files


Davangere: Madan Gopal, Principal Secretary for Higher Education, visited Davangere University here on Tuesday and held a meeting with university officials including Vice-Chancellor Indumathi. Mr. Gopal examined certain files of the university and discussed issues pertaining to its development.
Later, speaking to presspersons, he said his visit to the university was a matter of routine and appealed to presspersons not to read too much into the matter. He said he would visit Kuvempu University on Wednesday and also planned to visit other universities in the State. Rumours were rife that Mr. Gopal visited the university because complaints of misuse of funds were reported by the Vice-Chancellor.
Discounting the claim, the officer said there were no problems in the new university. He said he had come there only on an inspection and to get feedback on certain proposed educational reforms.

Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa was concerned that only 13 per cent of students in the State were pursuing higher education and wanted to see that at least 20 per cent did so in the next two years. Hence, he had asked the Education Department to suggest reforms and prepare universities to work in this direction, he said.

Besides this, the Government was keen on bringing a uniform code to all universities in the State to ensure that they all held admissions, examinations, announce results and conduct convocations with a fixed time-frame. Now, universities have their own schedules for these events, he said and added that the Government would bring in certain steps to ensure that universities followed a definite timetable.
Apart from this, the Government wanted to fill all backlog vacancies so that work in universities was not affected for want of manpower. Conferences of colleges at the division level would soon be held to mobilise opinion on certain proposals for reforms, he said and added that a new project called ‘Knowledge Exchange' among universities would soon be launched.

To a question, he agreed that a few complaints were made against the university to the Governor, who is the Chancellor Universities. He said he had collected information from the university in regard, and would meet the Governor soon.
Meanwhile, N.K. Gowda, Registrar of the university, alleged, during the press conference, that he was being sidelined by the Vice-Chancellor. He complained that he was not assigned any work so far. Mr. Gopal asked him to submit his grievance in writing to the Ministry.