Security personnel shut gates to keep out agitating students at Patna University on Tuesday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, Feb. 22: Fourteen months after the Patna University (PU) senate met the last time, it held its annual meeting at Wheeler Senate Hall today amid raising of slogans by different students’ bodies against the varsity administration.

PU vice-chancellor (VC) Sudipto Adhikari hardly began his annual speech when the senate members started raising questions against the PU administration’s failure in settling the absence of departments in various courses, lack of quarters for teachers and in settling the promotion cases of employees of the university.

While the PU administration and the VC were pushed on the backfoot on some issues, the senate members had to backtrack in some cases. Amarnath Singh, a senate member, amid the pandemonium raised by the other members, presented an annual budget of Rs 278.94 crore of which Rs 258.82 crore was shown as deficit budget. Several senate members remained absent, as they were preoccupied with the Assembly session.

The PU administration were on the backfoot on giving quota to MPhil students in PhD admission. Senate member Nitish Tuntun opposed the PU’s move, which many senate members supported. Tuntun claimed that since no university runs the MPhil course in Bihar, the proposal, if passed, would only students holding MPhil degrees from outside the state only and not anybody from Bihar. Tuntun also demanded that the university confer a doctorate upon chief minister Nitish Kumar. Replying to Tuntun’s query, the PU administration said there is a procedure for conferring a doctorate degree and the university will form a committee before sending a proposal to the chancellor’s office for final approval. Raising the issue of sports and fine arts quota in BEd admission, Arvind Nishad said the PU administration has wrongly interpreted the NCTE guidelines and removed the sports and fine arts quota from BEd admission without discussion.

When senate members sought assistance for building infrastructure in the self-finance course, the VC said the course was started without any vision and future and now the department was seeking funds from the university. Various students bodies demonstrated outside the senate hall, while All India Students’ Association held a parallel students’ senate at Patna College, demanding Rs 10 lakh compensation for Chandrashekar’s family.