Assam Engineering College. Picture by UB Photos

Oct. 27: The alumni of Assam Engineering College (AEC) have expressed reservations about the starting date of the institute?s year-long golden jubilee celebrations.

The Assam Engineering College Alumni Association has requested the organising secretary of the AEC golden jubilee celebration committee not to ?distort? the history of the institute by starting the celebrations on January 25 next year instead of September 16, the date on which classes of the first batch began 50 years ago.

College authorities said the request had been considered at the steering committee meeting of the golden jubilee committee.

The meeting, however, decided to continue with the schedule chalked out for the golden jubilee celebrations, while earmarking ?appropriate events targeting primarily the alumni of the college for September, 2005?.

A student of the first batch of the college, R.. Deka, said: ?Everyone associated with the college is aware that the AEC started on September 16, 1955, with the first batch of 72 students taking admission to the college which started at the Assam Engineering Institute at Chandmari. If the celebrations begin on January 25, 2005, it would carry the message that the college started on January 25, 1955, which would be a flagrant travesty of the truth.?

?The golden jubilee year celebration should be re-scheduled from September 16, 2005, to September 16, 2006, so that the college history is not distorted,? Deka said.

The college did not even exist then, said G.C. Talukdar, another student of the first batch.

He pointed out that January 25, 2005, did not hold any significance as far as the golden jubilee celebrations were concerned.

The day neither marks the completion of 50 years of the start of the college nor the laying of the foundation stone of the college building (January 25, 1956) nor the inauguration of the college building (January 16, 1958).

The organising secretary of the AEC golden jubilee celebration committee, Atul Bora, said: ?There is no need to reschedule the celebration period as the establishment year and the year in which the golden jubilee of the college will be celebrated are correctly depicted in our brochure as 1955-2005.?

Bora said the college has been celebrating January 25 as its foundation day and no one has ever organised any function on September 16 to commemorate the admission of the first batch into the college.