The education department on Wednesday granted a year's time to 29 colleges under Magadh University whose affiliations were pending because of poor infrastructure.

The colleges now have a year to strengthen infrastructure and academic activities.

The Magadh University (MU) in June had decided to disaffiliate 64 colleges as the education department had turned down the recommendations of the MU senate to grant affiliation to the institutions of questionable status.

On Wednesday at a meeting chaired by education minister Krishnanandan Prasad Verma, which was attended by members of the Legislative Council and officials of the education department, the government decided to give one year to the 29 colleges. Verma said: 'The government has decided to grant a year to the colleges to improve their infrastructure and academic work.'

The department's decision can be seen as a step taken without doing a homework.

An official with the department who was part of the meeting said: 'A total of 64 colleges were disaffiliated in June when Ashok Choudhary was the education minister. The present minister on Wednesday took the decision to grant one year to improve infrastructure of 29 colleges, but no decision was taken about the rest 35. At the meeting, decision was taken only to grant one year to those colleges who had sent request applications. The 35 colleges neither sent any application to the education department urging them to grant extra time to strengthen infrastructure nor was there any discussion on the issue.'

At the meeting, it was also decided to constitute a composite service scheme merging the cadre of secondary education and higher secondary. With the scheme for secondary and higher secondary, there can be transfer of teachers of secondary schools to higher secondary schools based on the teacher's qualification, competence and vacancies at the respective schools.