The students’ union election of Ranchi University (RU) pending for the past six years will be held between August to September 2014. University Senators on Saturday decided to conclude next session's admission by July end so that all the students of RU colleges and post graduate departments can cast their vote for their representatives following the guidelines of University Grants Commission's (UGC) lyngdoh Committee.
Most of the participating student unions had requested to conduct the elections on direct mode at both college and university level which is against the norms of lyngdoh Committee. The norms clearly mention that for a large university like RU having several constituent, autonomous and minority colleges along with post graduate (PG) departments spread in various locations students can directly vote for their representatives at college level or department. Following this guideline, university representatives are selected from among the college and PG representatives elected by college and PG department students. The later is known as indirect mode.
A sub-committee was framed under the chairmanship of Ranchi College Principal Dr UC Mehta to look over this matter and submit a report as solution to this problem. The committee had earlier planned to conduct the same after Durga Puja holidays. "After the puja vacations, end term examinations are being held in four autonomous colleges namely St Xavier's College, Ranchi Women's College, Ranchi College and Marwari College. Moreover, admission in most of the PG departments is not yet done. In such situation, the elections can either be held in the last weeks of January 2014 or in the beginning of next session commencing from August because overall student participation in important as voters," said Dr Mehta. Students will be nominated for the posts of President, Vice-President, Secretary, General Secretary and Deputy Secretary. Mehta stressed on next session's plan so that the one year tenure for these representatives can be maintained.
Notably, because of this election, the recent three senate meets (known to be the deliberative assembly of the university) were being organized with no student representative. Before the starting of this senate meet, senators like Pratulnath Shahdeo, Amit Kumar, Shivshankar Oraon, Yogoda Satsanga College's Commerce Professor RP Gope and newly elected non teaching staff Pawan Jedia sat on floor today demanding for a final announcement on this election in front of the Senate heads comprising RU Vice Chancellor (VC) Dr lN Bhagat, Pro-VC Dr Raziuddin and Registrar Dr AK Choudhary.
After a span of decades, this was for the first time, representatives from teaching and non-teaching staffs participated in the senate. The elections for these awaited positions were held in October this year. RU has approached corporate companies like Jindal and Bank of India to manage the infrastructural hurdles dealt by Suraj Singh Memorial College, Ram lakhan Singh Yadav College and other colleges under this university.
The decision to establish independent departments for nine languages of Tribal and Regional languages department was declared from next session through an action taken report here but VC announced to submit another report on this issue in the next senate. At present, TRl department is carrying out PG, M.Phil and Doctorate courses in nine languages with only four faculty members. The issue of not incorporating reserved quota for non-teaching and teaching staffs election in Jharkhand State University Act was also discussed. About Rs 753.66 crores were passed as University's Budget for 2014-15 sessions. Senators raised queries on auditing of the last passed budgets wherein it was revealed that till date the state government has not passed the actual budget approved by any university of Jharkhand.
lastly, the senate approved the medical insurance plan for its employees. VC has decided to tie up this scheme with life Insurance Corporation. As many as 55 out of 95 senators were present on this occasion. State Human Resources Development Minister Geetashree Oraon attended the meet for only 45 minutes while Higher Education Director DN Ojha was absent.