CHANDIGARH, June 2. Girl students enrolled in government secondary and higher secondary schools statewide will be offered sanitary napkins at a subsidised price of Re.1 from August. Women from BPL (below poverty line) households will also be covered under the scheme, says a state government communiqué.

This decision was taken by Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar after a meeting with senior officials of the school education and health ministries. A recent government survey revealed that only 28 percent of adolescents use sanitary napkins, and 40 percent of women use rough cloth during menstruation, making them vulnerable to disease. 

 

Bihar
Anti-harassment drive

PATNA, June 14. Bihar governor Satya Pal Mallik invited girl students in public higher education institutions across the state to report all incidents of teasing, molestation and other types of sexual harassment “directly to Raj Bhavan”, where officers have been deputed to help victims get justice.

The ex officio chancellor of all public universities in the state, Mallik made the announcement at a conference organised by student unions of Bihar. “It is our dharma to ensure our women live with honour. Women students studying at universities can directly report incidents of sexual harassment to Raj Bhavan (the governor’s official residence) before filing a report at a police station,” said Mallik.

Also addressing the conference, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi said the state government is committed to raising the quality of higher education in the state and has appointed a separate commission to manage and monitor faculty recruitments. Moreover, teaching staff are now being paid salaries on time and the academic sessions have been regularised, said Modi.
 
 

Delhi
Doctorate qualifications focus

NEW DELHI, June 13. From the academic year 2021-22, a Ph D will become a mandatory qualification for assistant professors of universities while a Masters and National Eligibility Test (NET) qualification or Ph D will continue to be the eligibility criteria for professorial appointments in colleges, Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said in an official circular dated June 13.

Announcing new regulations of the University Grants Commission, Javadekar said academic performance indicators (API) which make research work compulsory for college teachers, has been scrapped to enable teachers to focus on teaching. “The effort is to improve quality of higher education and attract and retain the best talent in the country. All incentives of earlier regulations have been retained except API for college teachers,” he says.

Indian students awarded Ph Ds by global Top 500 universities will also become eligible for university appointments, added Javadekar. 
 

Punjab 
Improvement audit initiative

CHANDIGARH, June 20. The state government is set to introduce an academic audit of undergrad colleges from 2019-20. According to an official communique, this decision was taken at a meeting with principals of government colleges chaired by Razia Sultana, Punjab’s minister for higher education.  

“To streamline higher education in Punjab, all government colleges will shift to online admission and attendance processes from the next academic year. Moreover, every college will be required to submit a monthly progress report of its academic and other activities,” says a government spokesperson.

 

Uttar Pradesh
Slippery award

BARABANKIi (UP), June 9.  Alok Misra, a student of the Young Stream Inter College, Barabanki who averaged 93.5 percent in the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Board’s class X exam, was invited to Lucknow on May 29 for a felicitation ceremony at which he was awarded a cheque of Rs.1 lakh by chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
After the cheque was deposited, it was dishonoured due to “mismatched signature”. Moreover, the student’s father was obliged to pay a penalty for it by the bank. The cheque presented to Alok bore the signature of Raj Kumar Yadav, district inspector of schools, Barabanki.

 

West Bengal
Right to cheat protest 

JALPAIGURI, June 30. Some students writing the class X exams of the West Bengal Council of Rabindra Open Schooling protested the presence of civic volunteers specially deputed outside exam centres to prevent cheating and other malpractices, according to police sources.

Complaints of cheating by many of the 120 students who wrote the history paper in the city’s Fanindra Deb Institution, on June 29 prompted the police to deploy civic volunteers at test centres the following day. “Our men will be posted at test centres until the exams end on July 7,” affirmed Biswasroy Sarkar, inspector-in-charge of the Kotwali police station, Jalpaiguri.

Paromita Sengupta with bureau inputs