Charging the Centre with "playing havoc" with higher education in the country, BJP on Tuesday demanded that the government come clean on the issue of granting of deemed university status to some fake institutes.
"Our charge is that the government has played havoc with higher education in the country. It should strict action now and not handle higher education lightly," BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
Expressing the party's ire over granting of deemed university status in big numbers during UPA-I, Prasad said, "Why was (HRD Minister) Arjun Singh distributing deemed university status like a big largesse?"
Describing it as a "cruel joke" Prasad said that an institution has to meet set criteria for infrastructure and status before it could become a deemed university.
"During the NDA rule, HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi gave deemed university status to institutions like the IITs and IIMs," Prasad said. He further alleged that Singh had flouted the UGC regulations which apply in such cases. He described Singh's tenure as HRD minister as "full of populism and opportunism".
Prasad said he wondered why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself an educationist who taught in the Delhi School of Economics, allowed the "shady activities going on in Shastri Bhawan (HRD Ministry) over the years" to take place.
Government should now take the right decision in favour of the students who were studying in these fake deemed universities and ensure their future is secure, he demanded. PTI
