Saffron' varsity in firing line of CM Kamal Nath gets down to undo saffronisation of varsity

Bhopal: In its zeal to “desaffronise” the educational institutions in Madhya Pradesh, the Kamal Nath government has turned up the heat on an elite journalism university of Central India, products of which have shined in leading visual and print media in the country.

Barely three weeks after coming to power, chief minister Kamal Nath constituted a three-member committee to probe the “complaints” that the Bhopal-based Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Mass Communication (MCNUJMC) is promoting a “particular ideology” through its prescribed courses of study as well as other academic activities.

The committee needs to probe allegations of “the university revising its courses of study to promote a particular ideology”, said one of the six-point terms of references given to the investigation team.

Amid the move by the Kamal Nath governemnt to “desaffronise” the educational institutions in the state, vice-chancellor and rector of the journalism university, Jagdish Upasana and Lajpat Ahuja respectively, resigned from their posts.

The state government has also reshuffled some officers at the top level of administration in the university.

The probe committee headed by the additional secretary in state public relations department, Gopal Reddy, has been directed to submit its report within 15 days. What intrigued the academic circle here is the selection of the members in the probe committee.

While one of the members of the committee, Bhupendra Gupta, a former spokesman of Madhya Pradesh Congress, is officer-on-special duty (OSD) in chief minister’s office, the other member is Sandeep Dixit, whose address is given in the enquiry order, the copy of which is with this newspaper, as Vindhyanchal Dairy, village Gora, Bhopal.

“The constitution of probe committee with a Congress leader and a person linked to a dairy farm as its members, has created an impression in public that the move was more aimed at witch-hunt than cleaning the mess,” a professor in the Barkhatullha University (BU) here said.

“The exercise may harm the image of the university and consequently, the interest of the students,” he apprehended.

The university was earlier at the centre of controversy dropping a subject on Nehruvian socialism for fourth semester students.

The university has a total of 327 employees. A majority of them were recruited in the 1990s when the Congress was in power in the state.