Mumbai: Without discussing a single students, teachers, examinations, assessment, results, courses, feesissue related to students, teachers, examinations, assessment, results, courses, fees, infrastructure, ranking or budget, the elected senate members concluded the annual senate meeting on Wednesday at the Mumbai University (MU), Fort.
Even though this meeting was called to pass the annual budget of the MU, senate members spent most of the day arguing on trivial issues and challenged the statutes. Students and teachers revealed the senate has let them down as they approach the senate with problems faced in the varsity so that they can raise these issues to the higher authorities of the MU.
Lara Chakraborty, a student, said, “We expect the senate members to highlight our grievances and question the MU officials. But instead, these members wasted the entire day fighting over trivial matters.” While Subhash Kamath, a teacher, said, “There are crucial issues like salaries of teachers and assessment which were notified but no concrete action has been taken.”
The annual budget was supposed to be presented, discussed and passed in the meeting. But the budget was not presented as senate members began arguing why they were given the agenda as per the old statutes when new statutes have been released by the governor. Sudhakar Tamboli, a senate member, said, “How can we discuss provisions according to old rules when the governor has released new rules? We have not even studied the new rules for us to discuss any issue based on it.”
Authorities of MU appealed to the senate members to discuss matters according to new rules even though the agenda was made according to old statutes. Suhas Pednekar, Vice-Chancellor (VC) of MU, said, “We had already made the agenda before the new rules were released by the governor. Discussing issues is more important than debating the rules by which they should be discussed.”
In addition, the Action Taken Report (ATR) was discussed where members highlighted the university has not catered to several issues like conducting police verification of teachers, performance of On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for online assessment and pension plans of teachers.
An educationist, said, “Members are demanding for two days to discuss the budget when they clearly wasted the one day when the meeting was conducted.” Members walked out of the meeting on several occasions. This senate meeting was held after a year. The senate will now meet on Thursday to discuss the issues.
