UGC to ask Delhi University to review FYUP

The University Grants Commission will be asking Delhi University to review the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), which has been embroiled in controversy since its inception. An Advisory Committee had been formed last year to review the implementation of the programme and a meeting of the UGC on Friday took the decision to ask DU to revisit the issue.

“The permissions from the UGC have also been obtained without following due procedure. An application to change the structure of the course had to be made six months prior to the implementation, which in this case was made and gotten a month before the implementation,” said Delhi University Teachers’ Association president Nandita Narain.

“This is long overdue but a welcome move, this illegality cannot be allowed to propagate any further,” said Abha Dev Habib, Delhi University teacher and main organiser of the “Save DU campaign”, which has been relentlessly protesting against the FYUP. She said the onus lies on the UGC, too, to see to it that students who were thrust with the sub-standard course were relieved. The DUTA, for its part, has come up with an action plan so that students of the FYUP do not face an acute disadvantage, she pointed out. The clamour for the roll-back of the FYUP had become stronger after the BJP came to power at the Centre.

Earlier in the day, the BJP’s teachers’ wing, the National Democratic Teachers’ Front, said they had petitioned all seven recently elected BJP MPs of Delhi to keep their word to roll-back the FYUP.

They were present along with their political rivals, the Left-affiliated Democratic Teachers’ Front and the Congress-affiliated INTEC.

DUTA, which had organised the meeting, said all teachers, except a faction who were supporting the university, had come together despite their political differences.

They had also written a letter to the President, who is the Visitor of the university, pointing out the illegality of the course, the manner in which it was implemented and also said that the university’s argument that they were autonomous was just comical.