The HRD Ministry on Wednesday approved the guidelines and sanctioned grants for eight States under the Centre’s ambitious 1 lakh crore ‘Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan’ (RUSA) programme.
The Mission Authority RUSA approved the guidelines including programmatic norms of the various components of the scheme and the equalisation formula based on which the funding support would be determined. It also gave its approval to consider the applications of Goa, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand and West Bengal to participate in RUSA. These States had responded after the cut-off date of October 31, 2013. This was decided in the first meeting of the Mission Authority of RUSA on Wednesday presided by HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju.
“Since immediately after the approval of RUSA in October, 2013 some of the States went to polls, they were requested by the Centre to indicate their willingness to participate in RUSA. The Mission Authority gave its approval to consider the applications of Mizoram and Chhattisgarh who had responded to the Centre’s request. The Mission Authority also discussed the logo for RUSA, which would be finalized soon and adopted for the Scheme,” said a HRD official.
Dr Narendra Jadhav, Member Planning Commission, Ministers of Higher Education in the States, Chairmen and Vice Chairmen of State Higher Education Councils and Principal Secretaries of Higher Education in the States. Ashok Thakur, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Dr. Keshav Desiraju, Secretary, Department of Health & Family Welfare and Vice Chairpersons of UGC and AICTE also attended.
The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) made presentations to cater to the requirements of institutions to undergo assessment and accreditation besides outlining the strategy programme design, content creation and delivery mechanisms to be adopted under RUSA for creating a pool of potential leaders. The Mission Authority also examined the progress made so far under RUSA and expressed its pleasure on the pace of its implementation, said the official.