Varsity moots bus facility for girls

ALLAHABAD UNIVERSITY (AU) may soon ply buses in the city to bring and drop-off varsity's female students.

A proposal in this regard has been submitted by the varsity's Dean Students Welfare to the AU Vice-Chancellor Prof Rajen Harshe to tackle the problem being faced by the girl students of the university in coming to the varsity for classes and returning home in a city lacking a public transport system.

The proposal will now be put before the Allahabad University Finance Committee for approval and to decided as to whether to procure buses and employ the drivers or simply out-source the work.

Decision in this regard was taken by the members of the AU Planning and Development Board who met at the Committee Room of the AU Vice-Chancellor’s Office on Friday evening.

The meeting was presided over by Prof Harshe.

The Board members decided that the service is much-needed in the varsity which in the past too offered this facility to the female students.

In another important decision, the Vice-Chancellor  formed a four-member committee comprising of Prof AK Srivastava of the Chemistry Department, Prof RK Upadhyaya of Defence Studies department, the Planning and Development Board's member-secretary Prof JN Bhargava and varsity's Chief Public Information Officer Prof Amrendra Singh as the convenor to look into the task of strengthening the varsity's communication network and making it ready to deal with any security related emergency that may arise on the campus.

The committee members will invite proposals from leading mobile service providers and recommend one of them based on its merit to the Board for consideration.

During the meeting, the VC also instructed the AU Chief Librarian to prepare a proposal for procurement of latest books and journals for the Central Library and submit the proposal with the next 48 hours to him.

The Vice-Chancellor and the Board members also resolved to spruce up the Central Library at a war-footing and that the Vice-Chancellor will write to all the Heads of the departments to expedite the process of short-listing the books and journals for their procurement.

The Board decided that the varsity will also organise a book fair on the campus to enable the AU teachers to browse through the books of the their subjects and recommend their procurement for the Central Library.

It is to be recalled that Rs 2.50 crore of the recently released Rs 13.34 crore— which is around one-third of the allotted Rs 40.05 crore by the University Grants Commission (UGC) to Allahabad University for 2006-07— has to be utilised by July 15, 2006 following which the next instalment of the funds would be released to the varsity.

The Vice-Chancellor also directed that the Allahabad University Proctor Prof Jata Shankar along with the varsity engineer NK Singh would chalk out the projects which can be completed by July 15, 2006 utilising the recently released funds.

A number of senior teachers and officials including the Registrar Prof US Rai, Finance Officer Prof JN Mishra, AU Engineer NK Singh, Prof JN Bhargava, Prof AK Srivastava, Prof RK Upadhyaya, Dr Archana Chahal and Chief Public Information Officer Prof Amrendra Singh were present at the
meeting.