Since the Department of Higher and Technical Education has resorted to conducting regular meeting of university Vice Chancellors through video conferencing it has become less painful affairs altogether. With the intervention of Principal Secretary Ajoy Kumar Singh the silent change has started putting its imprints.
The Department has recently launched a video conferencing mechanism to hold meetings of VCs of the five universities of the State. “Never in the annals of Department history meetings called for the VCs by the HRD department the VCs faced camera and screen. Now they will push button to be seen and heard by the higher ups sitting in the capital,” said a senior official at Nilamber Pitamber University situated in Palamu, 170 kilometers away from Ranchi.
Similar is the case for officials at Kolhan University of Chaibasa, SKMU at Dumka, Hazaribag’s VBU and Ranchi ( RU) who no longer have to bear the pain to travel up to Ranchi and instead just go to their respective district informatics centres. Age old practice was to call the VCs to Ranchi for meetings. It used to come twice a month. On an average a long distance VC had to cover more than 350 kilometers ( up & down travelling) a month per every meeting to reach HRD in Ranchi.
“No Secretary in HRD department in the past ever thought on this lines to sit with the VCs in their places through video conferencing from Ranchi. The present Secretary of Higher & Technical Education embarked upon this video conferencing with the VCs which is a noble move,” said the official.
Sources said the some VCs have been indulged into the practice of not attending their offices for many days in the pretext of meetings in Ranchi. “The Secretary has fixed Monday November 23 as the date of first video conferencing with the five VCs of the five state universities here. The letter has been written to this effect to all the 5 VCs,” added the official showing copy of the letter.
Thirteen issues have been listed as agenda for the meeting. The lion share of the agendas is RUSA (Rashtriya Uccha Sikchha Abhiyan) and also involves status on functioning of women’s colleges in eleven districts.
For Monday video conferencing of Secretary with the VC NP university here the registrar of NPU Amar Singh has requested DC Palamu to make available DNIC ( district national informatics centre) here in Daltonganj.