The Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal had recently written to the education minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal requesting to amend section 5 (2) of the Delhi University (DU) Act.
According to the section, 5 (2) any new college established in Delhi has to be affiliated to the Delhi University. However, no new college was affiliated to the university in the last 30 years. In the 1998 amendment, the Indraprastha (IP) University IP University was accommodated in the act for professional courses.
Kejriwal affirms that the universities have attained their maximum limit for affiliating colleges and hence, there will be a need to amend the DU Act. Through an amendment in the DU, the capital city can get new universities and colleges.
The request has received mixed reactions among the faculty of collages.
Rajib Ray, president of Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA), says that the move will affect the affordability of education. “There are around 28 DU colleges under the Delhi government. They are facing extreme financial crunch and no funds are being allotted to the institutions; faculty have not received salaries for over six months. The number of colleges must increase but the institutions must have the autonomy, which may not be possible after colleges outside DU start coming up,” he adds.
He also mentioned that the rise in fee in the Delhi government-run DU colleges is a concerning matter.
He adds, “DU is home for students coming from economically weaker sections of the society. Once the government starts applying its rules to the new colleges, in no time, the fee will also be increased and education will become unaffordable."
On the other hand, Pankaj Kumar Chaudhary, assistant professor at Shyamlal College, says that establishing new colleges will be a benefit for the students with average scores and the mediocre.
Chaudhary says, “Half of the seats across courses in our college have been filled up only after the second cut-off. Students with 80-85% hardly get a seat in DU. While improving the infrastructure of existing colleges is crucial, setting up new colleges in the capital will be a boon for average scorers."
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The first cut-off percentage for most courses did not go below 99% at the Hindu College, for many years, while the admissions in 10 out of 21 courses have been closed after the second cut-off.
Anju Srivastava, principal of Hindu College, says that it is necessary to increase the number of seats as every year we are seeing 100% scorers in class XII boards which Is again constantly increasing. “The Act can be amended for the limited purpose as the changes will not affect the existing colleges under the DU. When you have more than 3 lakh students applying for around 1 lakh seats, it calls for an alternative solution to avoid skewed student-teacher ratio,” she adds.