Punjabi University short of minimum teaching days: Public accounts committee report

Times of India: Chandigarh: Sunday, April 13, 2014.

The academic session of Punjabi University, Patiala, is short of "minimum teaching days" and is not in accordance with University Grants Commission (UGC) norms, claimed a report of public accounts committee (PAC) of Punjab Vidhan Sabha.

The PAC has taken serious note of Punjabi University's action of adding sports activities and youth festival days in academic days and held that the university was short of minimum teaching days against the UGC norm of 180 days.

The PAC has also asked the university to strictly comply with the 180-day condition and has recommended that DPI (colleges) should also issue instructions to all colleges so that UGC norms are meticulously complied with in colleges.

The startling revelations, surfacing in the PAC report, were accessed under an RTI application by advocate H C Arora.

According to the RTI information, PAC observed that after excluding 104 Saturdays and Sundays, and 30 days of vacation, and 10 days of gazetted holidays, only 222 days were left during the academic session of 2012-13 for teaching. However, Punjabi University had wrongly included the days of project work outside the university, etc., in teaching days.

The PAC did not agree with the version of the varsity registrar that if approximately 32 days meant for sports, youth festivals and sudden declaration of holidays are to be included in teaching days, the total teaching days of the university will become 180.

The PAC also noticed that the university had shown nine gazetted holidays for arriving at minimum 180 teaching days, notwithstanding the fact that Punjab government is giving approximately 30 such gazetted holidays, apart from the suddenly declared holidays.

The RTI information also revealed that PAC has rejected the university's argument that Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Amritsar, and Panjab University, Chandigarh, are also computing 180 teaching days in the same manner.

Arora has issued a legal notice to Punjabi University and director of higher education to issue guidelines to ensure compliance of 180 academic days in universities and colleges.

UGC norms ;

As per UGC regulations, University/colleges must adopt 180 working days, i.e. there should be minimum 30 hours of actual teaching in a 6-day week. Twelve weeks may be devoted towards admission and examination activities and non-instructional days for co-curricular, sports, college day, etc. Eight weeks are for vacations and two weeks may be attributed to various public holidays.

However, Punjabi university had included the days of sports events, extra circular activities, etc., which should not have been included in the academic days.