Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

Barrackpore, Sept. 22: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said the government had been right to grant only partial autonomy to Presidency College.

“Our government has been criticised a lot after granting partial autonomy to Presidency. Some people said Presidency should have been granted absolute autonomy like St Xavier’s College,” the chief minister told a conference of the West Bengal Principals’ Council in Barrackpore.

“But one must understand that we have taken the decision to grant partial autonomy to Presidency on the basis of the recommendations of a committee that consisted only of former Presidency students, all of whom are established in their respective fields,” the chief minister said.

Bhattacharjee said the committee had made its recommendations after examining all aspects of the matter.

Officials have said that since Presidency is a state-controlled college, it was given only partial autonomy. The college will neither have the right to recruit staff nor decide the syllabus without approval from Calcutta University — which means administrative and academic freedom will stay out of its reach.

But St Xavier’s being a missionary college will enjoy absolute autonomy in academic, financial and administrative matters, they added.

The chief minister announced that the government would upgrade a number of colleges that have the potential to be developed as centres of excellence.

But he expressed concern at the increasing tendency among a large section of college students to rely on private tuition.

“We cannot stop them (the students) from taking private tuition. But we call upon the college heads to take the responsibility of creating an awareness among them so that the practice is curbed,” the chief minister said.

Bengal’s poor literacy rate came in for criticism. “According to the last census, the literacy rate in our state is still 70 per cent. This is not a welcome sign,” Bhattacharjee said.

“We have to reach cent per cent literacy as Kerala has done.”