AHEMDABAD : Gujarat Technological University (GTU) has issued a notification to all its affiliated technical education colleges it would send its  teams to carry out surprise checks. The university has directed all colleges to co-operate with the squads.

The notification comes on the heels of the report submitted by the Local Inquiry Committee (LIC) which revealed that nearly 40 per cent of faculty posts in diploma and degree in engineering, pharmacy, MBA, MCA, Master of Engineering, M.Pharm, architecture and hotel management courses are lying vacant. What’s more, 50 per cent of these self-financed colleges are currently headless and are being managed by officiating principals.

GTU recently formed teams headed by nine deans to carry out surprise inquiries at different colleges. The college owners, however, opposed these checks saying that the inspection should be carried out only through prior information.

GTU issued a notification saying. “We are very serious about the issue of ascertaining the true infrastructure and human resource picture at the colleges so that the students are not shortchanged. We have directed all college managements to co-operate with the investigating teams,” said A K Aggarwal, GTU vice- chancellor.

The GTU had recently asked colleges to furnish details about the staff, number of students and infrastructure at college campuses, including laboratory equipment. The university has also designed a web page and posted all the information on online.

GTU teams will now check whether the information furnished to the university is correct or whether the staff and facilities exist only on paper. The GTU is especially careful about the laboratory facility at colleges. Recently, numerous instances have come to light where colleges had furnished the practical marks to the GTU while it was disclosed later that they had not conducted the exam as they did not have labs in the college!
“Colleges have been told that practical marks will not be considered if it is found that the colleges do not have adequate labs and lab equipment,” said
Aggarwal.

13 tech colleges headless
GTU officials say of the 16 government engineering colleges in the state, only three colleges have full-time principals. The rest 13 are being run under by officiating principals.

The situation in self-financed colleges is equally alarming. Of the 92 self-financed colleges, the post of principal is vacant in 45 institutions. In 47 colleges that have principals, 15-odd colleges have principals who are above 65 years of age.

The rules stipulate that the age of principal in technical colleges should not be above 65 years. In fact, enquiries done by GTU revealed that 15-odd
colleges had principals above this age. GTU has issued notices to these colleges to relieve principals who are above 65 years and recruit other candidates in their place.

Majority of the colleges have initiated the process to recruit principals and have also conducted interviews. However, GTU officials have found that many colleges had directly appointed their own candidates as principals without taking permission of GTU. “It is mandatory to get the candidature of a principal cleared by GTU,” said university officials.

Any candidate who is a professor and has completed 10 years of teaching can apply for the position of principal. Alternatively, teachers who are not
professors but have 13 years of teaching experience can apply for the position.