Governor Ram Naik claimed that despite of very low enrollment for high studies in comparison to other European countries, the Women in Uttar Pradesh are now performing to best of their strength and even giving better results then compare to other gender.
Greeting the members of the fairer sex on occasion of `World Women Day’ to be celebrated on Tuesday, Naik while giving report card of the status of higher education in the State during his last one year tenure said that he was feeling very happy and proud to present the available date which showed that how the women was excelling then compare to their male counterparts.
``Though I gave degrees to just 40 percent of females during the last one year but when it comes to winning medal, I feel both happy and proud that out of 1196 medals, the women got 806 medals which is 67 per cent of the total tally”, cited Naik while greeting all the members of fairer sex on occasion of Women Day. ``Out of the above, 79 per cent of medals were won by the women in technical university of the State which is more than ¾ of the total”, he pointed while adding that even in Agriculture field, woman won 34 percent of the total medals.
Naik further elaborated the success of women claiming that 62 percent of women won `Chancellors Medal’, 63 percent won `Gold Medal’, 66 percent won `Silver Medal, 73 percent won `Bronze Medal’ and 76 percent excelled in other categories. However, Naik said that Gross Enrollment Ratio in India is just 17.90 percent in comparison to England, America etc and the same for women is mere 12.70 percent which pointed that a lot has to be done to attract the youth to take higher studies.
Naik also said that a lot has been done to improve the status of education standard of the state universities. ``I made sincere efforts but a lot has to be done to improve the standard of state universities”, Naik said while informing that he also formed a panel to fix points for each achievement of Universities so that it’s valuation would help them to identify which is the top institution in Uttar Pradesh. Interestingly when asked that his proposal for increasing the tenure of vice-chancellors of the University from present three years to five years has been turned down by the state government,
Naik avoided to make any direct comment to avert controversy. ``I know the functioning of the state government and it took lot of exercise to clear any changes so I thought that if the same has been turned down, chief minister must have informed me. However, still I will pursue the matter with the government to increase the vice-chancellor’s tenure”, asserted Naik.
When asked about liberty of students to speak their mind on any issue in the college campus particularly in wake of government action in JNU matter, Naik refused to speak any context which took place out of Uttar Pradesh. However, he said that Universities are the place where ideological discussions are made and debates produced outstanding leaders in the country but one should keep in his mind that there is a limit to everything.
Interestingly, he not ended there but reminded media that how an editor of a newspaper was arrested in the country just for keeping his editorial page `blank’. ``Your freedom ends where my nose begin”, everyone should keep in mind while raising question on `freedom’, he further added.
On giving directions to hoist national flag in every University of the State, Naik said that he gone through a similar direction from HRD minister Smriti Irani in reference to Central Universities, so he wrote a letter to her seeking details that what guidelines are given along with the above orders as also to respect the national flag which is top most priority so once he will get a reply, he would pass necessary orders in this regard.
On the issue of very few teachers in the Urdu Department at lucknow University, Naik said that there are about 30 to 40 percent vacancies lying vacant in all the Departments of the State universities so he already took up the matter with the chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and efforts were already on to get those filled.