The Central University of Kashmir (CUK) was established in March 2009 by virtue of the enactment of the Central Universities Act, 2009 with its territorial jurisdiction limited to the Kashmir division.
According to the ‘vision’ of this university, highlighted on its website, the University aims to “contribute to the educational, cultural, economic and social advancement of people providing high quality educational programmes leading to Bachelors, Masters, Professional and Doctorate Degrees as well as to address the cultural, economic, educational, environmental, health and social needs of the region and nation at large.”
The website also lists the ‘essential features’ of the university, located in Ganderbal district of Central Kashmir, including that the campus which shall be developed on the modern design with features having a “green campus and energy efficient buildings” apart from “provision for future expansion and space economy to be integral components of the plan.”
However, ever since its established more than a decade ago with much hype and fanfare, the university is yet to have its own permanent campus, with permanent infrastructure and facilities for its faculty, students and researchers, thus revealing how its administrators since 2009 have failed in their primary duty of establishing the permanent campus at Tulmulla, where more than 500 acres of land had been provided to it.
An additional 94 kanals of land had been transferred to CUK in Watlar, Lar, Ganderbal in 2021 for establishment of residential and other utility quarters.
This decade-long poor show by the CUK administrators is contrary to the grand show exhibited by the administrators of Central University of Jammu which has established its permanent campus despite being established under the provisions of the same Act more than 10 years ago.
The CUK has since 2009 been operating from rented accommodations in different parts of Srinagar City and, at present, different locations in Ganderbal. Its administrative office was set-up at Hyderpora Srinagar in May 2009 while the Transit Campus was set up at Sonwar in August 2010.
A boys’ hostel was set up at Sonwar to facilitate the students coming from different parts of the J&K UT/Country, even as an Academic block of the University along with a boys and a girls’ hostel was established at Magarmal Bagh Srinagar. According to faculty members and students of CUK, there is nothing as of now to give them a feel of a university setting and ambience.
“A University must appear like a university first, not like a small primary school building where students are converged in dingy classrooms. In the last one decade, we have been roaming from one place to another like shepherds for official, academic and non-academic purposes,” said a group of faculty members.
The University is scattered from area to area, and this is the biggest disservice that its administrators have done to it instead of focusing on how the permanent campus can be established at Tulmulla with all modern amenities for teaching, research and sports activities.
A visit to Tulmulla Main Campus, where permanent constructions were supposed to come up, only one big structure (site office) is visible from a distance on a vast patch of land, apart from few dilapidated prefab structures on the periphery.
A closer look at the pre-fab structures reveals that many of them don’t even have the necessary nuts and bolts, while their condition is so poor that some of them appear to be on the verge of collapse.
“This big building (site office) was established during the tenure of ex-CUK VC Prof Abdul Wahid Qureshi. Ever since, not a single concrete building has come up here,” said an official at the site.
While CUK authorities have time and again blamed ‘poor land and soil quality’ at Tulmulla for delay in constructions, it has been revealed that the Ministry of Education, Government of India, constituted a high-level committee—popularly known as the Rao Committee after Professor Rao of the IIT Delhi—which heavily criticized the university administrators for holding this ‘flawed view’.
Prof Rao is once said to have remarked in presence of former VC Prof Mehraj-ud-Din that such views must not be allowed to propagate because ‘there is no place on earth where buildings cannot come up’ and that it is ‘just a matter of making use of right technology’ to make it happen in today’s world.
Interestingly, ex CUK VC Prof Mehraj-ud-Din, who demitted the office last year after completing his VC tenure of nearly eight years (permanent/in-charge), has openly admitted to a section of press that he as the VC has “failed to establish the university.”
Notably, the university has been paying rent worth millions of rupees every year against the buildings it operated from in Srinagar and Ganderbal ever since 2009 and questions have time and again been raised over the continuation of this unhealthy practice.
Accusations were rife that continuation of this practice of taking buildings on rent fetched the varsity’s top administrators “hefty dividends” and many complaints in this regard have already been received by many government quarters, leading to probes after probes.
One official, in know-how of CUK issues, admitted that its administrators failed to initiate construction works at Tulmulla when the varsity had a ‘very liberal funding’ in its kitty.
“The initial grant (seed money) to CUK would be 600-700 crore rupees, which is not the case today. Today there is no liberal funding policy so it may be all the more difficult to undertake constructions now. It should have been done earlier,” he said, wishing not to be named.
“We have given Rs 16 crore to make the University’s Master Plan, but these small structures (pre-fab) have been constructed in violation of the said Master Plan,” another official, well versed with the University system, said.
According to university insiders, a shocking revelation has surfaced that the university’s student enrollment to various postgraduate, integrated and research programmes has gone down considerably and one of the reasons for this decline is the lack of a permanent campus.
“We don’t see our admissions to various programmes taking place in full strength any longer. In absence of the permanent campus and permanent facilities for our students, hundreds of aspirants refuse to get admitted to this university,” said the officials.
Apart from issues related to infrastructural deficiencies, the university is battling acute levels of campus politicking in absence of a permanent Vice-Chancellor.
The appointment of Prof Farooq Ahmad Shah as in-charge VC by Prof Mehrajuddin has already landed in controversy over violation of seniority in the said appointment process, with the Education Ministry seeking a report in the matter.
The panel of five candidates has been submitted to the Ministry for appointment as Vice-Chancellor CUK and the appointment process is presently in the final stage, according to officials.
“We are expecting the VC appointment process to be finalized within a month,” said one official, asserting that the new VC has a challenging task at hand, beginning with establishing the permanent campus at Tulumulla which his predecessor failed to do.
The University also has a number of unfilled vacancies in the teaching faculties, especially those of Associate Professors and some administrative vacancies which must also be filled at the earliest to provide students the best possible faculty.
To conclude, it is a fact that in absence of a permanent campus, full faculty strength and able administration, it would be difficult to realise the mission of the University that its website highlights so prominently.
The University will never be able to achieve its objectives as well if its leaders and administrators do not get serious to make things happen.
The Union Ministry of Education must place special emphasis and lay sustained focus on the Central University of Kashmir which is yet to come up to the expectations of people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Its goals, objectives, salient features must be realigned with the modern day requirements of a university if it is to place its foot on the path of academic excellence. Sadly, it has been a poor show until now.