New Delhi:
Delhi University might start the process of offering and accepting forms online from next year, thus easing out the admission process problems of thousands of outstation students.
The University now has enough bandwidth to make this possible, but the problem is the large scale construction work that is on, particularly on the roads, that might make the process of laying down cables a time-consuming job, Vice Chancellor Deepak Pental said in Delhi on Tuesday.
Thousands of outstation students seeking admission to the University have to camp in the capital when the admission season begins, to personally purchase and submit forms.
There has been a growing clamour in recent days for making admission forms of DU available online.
"We have one Gigabyte of band-width now which is good enough but the roads in the campus are all dug out. I strongly hope next year students will be able to fill forms online though we cannot promise this as yet," he said.
He said the project to put the University on 'e-mode' has been given to Wipro after a year-long process of inviting tenders and negotiating.
"We want to put the whole student cycle on e-mode, so that a student is assigned a number when she enters University and all her processes - from admissions to results - are carried out under that number," Pental said, answering queries
from children and parents at an interactive session.
He also said that the face of the University will completely be transformed in the next five years as a lot of development work is being carried out under the Rs 1,300 crore plan grant.
He also sought to dispel the notion that colleges in the North campus were best to study at, and advised students to go for the subject of their choice rather than the college.
"All colleges have the same infrastructure, and even the colleges which are not as famous have very good faculty, a young faculty," he said.
The interactive session was presided over by former union minister and BJP MP Vijay Goel, who handed over a memorandum to the VC demanding that a debate be held on the issue of given some kind of preference in admissions to students from Delhi over those coming from outside.
As the demand was echoed by some assembled students, the VC said giving any kind of preference was against the tenets of a Centrally-funded University, and was
constitutionally not viable.
"There are so many students who come from distant places, ST students who come in search of education. They equally deserve to study in the University and this composite set up is an advantage to the institution," he said.
Goel also said that number of seats be increased for general category students and more colleges be made to offer evening shifts to accommodate as many students as possible.
The 61 colleges of the Delhi University currently have 54,000 seats, of which 27,270 are for the general category students, 14,560 are reserved for the OBC category and 12,150 for the SC/STs.
Goel pointed out that while the seats for the reserved categories have increased over the last three years, those for general category students have remained constant, as a result of which many students fail to find a seat in the University.
But Pental said making more colleges to operate double shifts was a problematic position "as most colleges who are currently offering evening shifts are embroiled in some or the other dispute".
Moreover, he said, with the implementation of the semester system, as is being done by the University in a phased manner, the time of classes will increase, thereby making two shifts not possible.
Responding to a question over whether any data was available as to the ratio of outstation to local students in the University, he said, according to unconfirmed estimates not more than 10-15 per cent students in the general category were from outside, but the University would try to procure the exact figures.
Addressing the issue of shortage of residential space for outstation students, Pental said the construction of two hostels with a capacity to house 1,000 students was underway and would be complete in two to three months.
"We have also requested to the University Grant Commission and Ministry of Human Resources Department for helping us construct two more hostels," he said.