Siliguri, Nov. 3: The Assembly standing committee on higher education today advised North Bengal University to change its question pattern and make it more objective at the undergraduate level so that students could score more marks.

Asish Banerjee, the Rampurhat MLA and chairperson of the House panel, came up with the suggestion after he found out that Siliguri Women’s College had not produced any students who got first classes, except in education, since it was set up in 1981. The women’s college is affiliated to NBU.

“I visited a degree college under NBU this morning and realised that students there had not scored first division marks in any subjects, barring education, since its inception in 1981. On enquiring, I found that the main problem was in the way the questions were structured by the varsity,” Banerjee, who was an associate professor of Rampurhat College, told vice-chancellor Arunabha Basumajumdar at the end of his daylong tour of the varsity and two colleges. The team visited Siliguri Government Polytechnic College too.

NBU is the second university after Netaji Subhas Open University in Calcutta to be visited by the team. The aim of the inspection was to study the administrative and academic status of the varsity before making recommendations to the state government. Among other suggestions, Banerjee also asked the VC to increase the library timings by a few hours.

Members of varsity’s employees’ association, teachers’ council and students’ outfits submitted memorandums on several demands to the House panel, whose representatives visited the different departments at the varsity, its library and hostel before attending a presentation made by Basumajumdar.

The VC enumerated all development works taken up by the varsity in the past three years. He requested the committee members to see to it that vacant posts were filled up at the earliest.

“No teaching or non-teaching posts have been sanctioned in NBU since 1982. Some sanctioned posts are vacant. There is immense workload and we request you to fill up the posts as well as increase their numbers,” the VC said.

The university now has 233 teaching posts of which 157 have been filled up. In the non-teaching category, 412 of the 618 posts have been filled up. Of the 44 posts for officers, 33 have been filled up.