Bihar universitities to have uniform calendar

Patna, February 20, 2007The two-member committee constituted by the Chancellor RS Gavai to devise ways for ensuring uniform holiday calendar in all the universities of Bihar has submitted its recommendations to the Raj Bhawan. The committee met at the Patna University to bring about parity in leaves and vacation so that teaching days could be maximized.A final decision on the uniform holiday calendar would be taken after the arrival of the Chancellor on Wednesday. This is, however, clear now that different universities would no more have their own holiday calendars, which has been the practice so far. Those universities which have already announced their calendars would have to withdraw it in the light of the new move.The committee has decided to go by the UGC guidelines, which means the teachers would have to be content with about 72-day holidays. For the non-teaching employees, the committee would go by the Bihar government rules with some modifications, as Saturdays have been declared holidays in the state now.The two-member committee comprised Bhagalpur University Vice Chancellor Prema Jha and Veer Kunwar Singh University, Ara Vice Chancellor Rampal Singh. Apart from them, Patna University VC Dr YC Simhadri and JP University, Chapra VC Jitendra Singh also participated in the meeting to present their views.Jha said that there was a consensus to follow the guidelines of the Raj Bhawan in this regard. "We are confident that it will be implemented from this year. We have gone by the model suggested by the Raj Bhawan and the suggestions have been sent," she said.In fact, former Chancellor Buta Singh had also sent a letter (No BSU8/2005-1632/GS, dated June 29, 2005) to all the vice chancellors to ensure that the holidays did not exceed 12 weeks. He also circulated the mandatory workload of lecturers, senior lecturers, readers and professors to the VCs.However, it remained a non-starter, with all the universities announcing their own holiday calendars. This year also, Magadh University had announced the over 110-day holiday calendar, while the calendar of Patna University, which proposed just 53 holidays, got stuck due to internal differences and reservations from Patna University Teachers' Association (PUTA).