Admission policy changes: JNU students protest at UGC office

Students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University today staged a protest outside the UGC office here against the recent amendments leading to massive seat cut and other changes in the admission policy of the university.

Police had a hard time controlling the protesters, who raised slogans against the University Grants Commission and demanded a rollback of the decision, and restore traffic on the road.

"We have been raising the issue ever since the new gazette notification was issued by the UGC in 2016, directing the universities to bring in changes in the admission and recruitment process. Our vice-chancellor kept assuring us that this will not have a negative impact on the students, but the results are now there for everyone to see," JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Mohit Pandey said.

The university released its prospectus last week effecting seat cuts in the MPhil and PhD programmes across the courses.

The Delhi High Court had dismissed the plea of certain students challenging JNU's admission policy for MPhil and PhD courses.

The court had said the UGC guidelines were binding on all the universities, paving the way for JNU to start its admission process.

As per the new prospectus, there would be no admission for research this year in centres such as the Centre for Sociology, Centre for Political Science, Centre for History, Centre for Indian Languages etc. The number of seats has been slashed in many other important centres as well.

JNU's oldest school, the School of International Studies, will offer MPhil and PhD seats in only three of its 13 centres.

Three schools -- School of Physical Sciences, School of Computational and School of Integrative Sciences and Biotechnology -- and two special centres -- Centre for Law and Governance and Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies -- have no seats for the integrated MPhil-PhD programme.

While the JNUSU had observed a three-day strike last week against the decision, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar had defended the move saying it was in accordance with the UGC norms.