After a public uproar, the Savitribai Phule Pune University has withdrawn a 11-year-old controversial circular stipulating that a gold medallist must among other things be "a vegetarian”.
Confirming the development, University Registrar Arvind Shaligram said on Saturday that the varsity withdrew the circular issued in 2006 which mandated that only vegetarians were eligible for the gold medals awarded by the University for their meritorious performances.
“Following objections raised in certain quarters, we have withdrawn the circular. We are writing to the donors who instituted two such gold medals to withdraw the stipulation,” Shaligram said.
According to Shaligram, no other donor excepting the two instituted under the endowment announced by one Shelar family.
After the Pune-based university withdrew controversial circular, State Education Minister Vinod Tawde intervened and said the circular in question was a old one.
In a statement issued here, Tawde said, “All universities have been directed to ensure that students be selected on the basis of merits alone, without any discrimination or in violation of their fundamental rights in the Constitution”.
The 2006 circular was issued in connection with an endowment of Rs 120,000, received from the Shelar family for instituting two gold medals to be awarded to the varsity's two top students in the science faculty.
The gold medals were: "Yoga Maharishi Rashtriya Kirtankar Ramchandra Gopal Shelar alias Shelar Mama" gold medal for excellence in Science, and another after his wife, titled, "Tyagmurti Smt. Saraswati Ramchandra Shelar Gold Medal", again for the science faculty.
A controversy over the circular after the local media reported that the endowment stipulated that the gold media winners must be "vegetarians, and free of any kind of vices".
The other conditions the Shelar family had prescribed for the endowment that the winners should be "traditional in thinking, follow Indian culture in his/her daily life, should practice meditation, Yoga and Pranayanam, should have bagged maximum awards in different Indian and western sports/games".
The winners must have "excelled in singing, dancing, drama and oratory, must have participated in AIDS awareness programmes, environment protection and anti-pollution drives, donated blood, must be in the top two ranks in SSC, HSC and graduation levels", are some of the other criteria.
The Aam Aadmi Party and several organisation had opposed the circular, dubbing that it was "discriminatory" in nature and had threatened to launch an agitation against the university.