Bringing the debate around the UGC’s circular of May 2016, which changed admission norms for M.Phil and Ph.D admission, outside Jawaharlal Nehru University, the JNU Students’ Union organised a protest outside the Commission on Friday.
After organising a meet outside the UGC office on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, JNUSU president Mohit Pandey and other members submitted a memorandum to the chairman and demanded that the regulations be revoked.
According to the students, the UGC notification was not a “guideline”, but a “straightjacket” with rigid examination criteria, admission rules and the criteria for the eligibility of research supervision. This, they said, grossly compromised the autonomy of universities, particularly those like JNU.
Adverse impact
They also pointed out that at a time when the Abdul Nafey committee constituted by the JNU administration had concluded that discrimination based on caste and ‘social group’ was a reality, and the students were fighting for interview marks to be reduced from ‘30% to 15%’ to mitigate the discrimination, the UGC notification demanded that the written exam be reduced to just a qualification.
The students said that 100% dependence on interview would open the door for discretion, discrimination and favouritism in the admission process. They pointed out that the new admission norm would kill the “deprivation points” system followed by JNU.
The students also said that the notification, if implemented, would see a drastic reduction in the number of M.Phil and Ph.D seats available, with many centres unable to provide a single seat over the next few years.
This because the guideline says that a research supervisor or co-supervisor, who is a professor at any given point of time, cannot guide more than three M.Phil and eight Ph.D scholars.
The students have also demanded that no university should be forced to adopt the UGC’s 2016 regulations.
