NU senate members call for online reforms, website overhaul

Nagpur: Digitalization of transaction for its 4.5 lakh students and upgrading the Nagpur University’s (NU) lacklustre website were among the key proposals moved during its bi-annual Senate meeting on Friday.

Senate members Dhanashree Borikar and Manmohan Bajpai were among those who raised the issue of online exam form filling and fee payment, applications for transcripts, duplicate marklists, eligibility certificates and other documents needed from time to time besides an overhaul of the NU website.

Bajpai said the university’s jurisdiction is spread over Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara and Gondia districts from where lakhs of students belonging to affiliated colleges have to come to the city for even petty works.

“A student sometimes has to spend Rs 300 on travel alone to personally come and deposit Rs 200 fee for a particular document. In case the student forgets anything, s/he is asked to come back again. It can’t be more punishing than this that in the digital era, our students are facing such problems,” Bajpai said.

He said the students’ agony is not limited to this; they are sent from table to table looking for the section concerned and clerk. Bajpai said a guidance centre was opened years ago at the entrance of the main building at Rabindranath Tagore Marg but it was closed all of a sudden.

He demanded that all exam works must now be done online only, which will also be a eco-friendly measure.

Borikar said the NU’s website was not up to the mark and proper information was not available. Bajpai said how can students from other parts of the country know about the over 90-year-old university. “Websites are now face of institutions. How can we be so callous about our image? Sometime back, the university didn’t even bother to change the picture of governor when there was a change of guard,” he said.

Another important proposal on agenda was put regarding electricity consumption by the university. Some members reminded the administration that it was paying Rs 3.5crore of students’ money in power bills when it can easily save on this head. ACs, fans and lights are switched on at 10am and shut at 6pm whether there is anyone in the offices and departments or not. The NU appointed a committee to look into the issue.

The House concluded after taking just three questions which consumed the entire one hour meant for interpellation (question hour). These were related to NU’s website put up by Bajpai. He had asked who was controlling the website, was information technology department deployed for it and how many employees were deputed for maintaining NU’s website.