To ensure regular inspection of Government colleges in the State, the Uttarakhand Higher Education Department has constituted a 12-member advisory committee. This committee would also recommend a plan to the State Government for setting up new Government colleges.
The director of the State Higher Education Department Jagdish Prasad said that the committee members would regularly visit Government colleges to ensure that the staff are performing their duties properly. The committee would also interact with the parents of the students and seek their advice for improving the academic environment in the colleges. Prasad said that since there are 87 functional Government colleges in the State it is difficult for him to monitor all the colleges. But with the help of the committee members the monitoring aspect would be taken care of. The director said that the committee would also recommend a plan to the State Government for setting up new colleges. The committee would suggest the norms for the colleges to the State Government.
The members of the committee are GC Ghildiyal (attached at Directorate Haldwani), BC Maklani (Principal Haldwani College), SK Srivastava (Principal Dwarhat College), Kl Bisht (Principal Tehri College), PC Tiwari (Principal Sitarganj College), GS Rajwar (Principal Narendra Nagar College), Uma Pathak (Principal Narayan Nagar), Harshwanti Bisht (Principal Doiwala College ), Gauri Sewak (Principal Dakpathar College), NS Bisht (Principal Devprayag College) and Chandra Dutt Soontha (Principal Champawat College).
The State Government has been suffering from a massive staff crunch and also lacks necessary infrastructure. The department data shows that there are only 42 colleges in the State which own their own land and building. There are five Government colleges which do not even have Government-allotted land. The buildings of 17 colleges are under different stages of construction. The department has 1,656 sanctioned posts of teachers out of which 971 posts are still vacant. The department has to take services of 408 contractual lecturers to fill in the gap. Interestingly, despite such a scenario the State Government opened as many as 20 new colleges last year.