Pay Commission revision in allowances cheer academicians

Hike in salaries and stipend will motivate researchers and increase the dignity of academicians

04.02.2019

c-Jagriti.Kumari@timesgroup.com

Seventh Pay Commission brought a bouquet of delightful news for 30,000 teachers and staff of central universities and 5,500 in deemed to be universities, while it will also make the lives of retired professors relevant. The government announced revision of allowances and special allowances for teachers and equivalent academic cadre, registrars, finance officers and controller of examinations in central universities.

Besides increasing the allowance for academicians, the UGC has enhanced honorarium for guest faculty to Rs1500 per lecture subject to a maximum of Rs 50,000 per month. Guest faculties are not entitled for benefit of allowances, pension, gratuity and leave etc as admissible to regular teachers.

“Announcement of allowances, HRA, and the 100% honorarium hike for guest faculties in universities and colleges has come as morale booster for teachers. Such kind of hike is an effort to maintain dignity of a university teacher,” said VS Negi, associate professor, SBS College (evening), Delhi University.

Apart from allowance for academicians, central government has also enhanced the fellowship of PhD students and other research personnel enrolled in any area of science and technology, effective January 1, 2019.

“Hike in research stipend is a commendable move as it will help to retain young talent to focus on research, which is largely ignored in India,” said Vinod Kumar Jain, vice-chancellor of Tezpur University, Assam.

Increased in Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and Senior Research Fellowship (SRF) is yet another welcome step. “Earlier, the hike in fellowship would take place only after 3-4 years of announcement of pay commission,” says Negi.

Fellowship increase will directly benefit more than 60,000 research fellows and will also provide a template to the state government to consider increase in their fellowship rates. Fellowship for the JRFs in the first two years of PhD has increased from Rs25,000 to Rs31,000 per month. Similarly, in the remaining tenure of PhD, SRF will get Rs35,000 a month as against Rs28,000, offered earlier.

This might come as a relief to researchers who recently staged a protest against the MHRD in December 2018, demanding a hike in the stipend.

Centre allocates Rs 93,847.64 to provide quality education for all

Budget announces Rs 37,461.01 crore for higher education, Rs 56,386.63 crore for school education, and National Education Mission increased to Rs 38,572 crore

TIMES NEWS NETWORK  04.02.2019

The Budget 2019 has put maximum emphasis on quality improvement programmes and has allocated funds to boost the setting up of new IIMs, IITs and research.

There has also been 245% increase in the allocation for quality improvement programmes in Technical Education (TEQIP-III).

Budget allocations have also been increased for setting up new IIMs and new Schools of Planning and Architecture.

For research programmes such as IMPRESS, Rs 130 crore has been allotted marking an increase of 37% compared to the previous year.

The IITs have been allocated Rs 6,223 crore in the interim budget apart from projects valued at Rs12,028 crore which have been sanctioned from Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA). More projects under HEFA will be announced in the coming year. The Central Universities have been provided Rs 6,484 crore while UGC has been allocated Rs 4900 crore.

In order to improve the skill levels among students, allocation for skill-centric programmes has been raised from Rs 40 crore to Rs 125 crore.

Overall, the HRD ministry received a budget allocation of Rs 93,847.64 crore in order to provide quality education for all in the interim Budget 2019-20 which is more than Rs 10,000 crore from the previous year’s budget allocation.

The government has increased budget allocation to the higher education sector by Rs 2,450 crore and has also made available more than Rs 17,000 crore using the HEFA funding mechanism. Total fund availability for the higher education sector for 2019-20 would be Rs 69,193.68 crore in 2019-20 which is almost double as compared to the last year.

The government has also provided an additional equity of Rs 2,100 crore to HEFA to help mobilise funds for building superior infrastructure in higher educational institutions. An increase of 70% has been allocated for the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, under which 10,000 villages have been adopted by the higher educational institutions.

Commenting on the budget, D A Prasanna, director, The National Institute of Engineering College, Mysore said, “Compared to last year’s budget, the significance given to education sector is really not up to the sectoral expectation. However, the positive side of it is that, the outlay for premier engineering institutions including the IITs and IIMs has increased. Also the allocation for research and higher education has increased. Aspiration of institutes to rank high in the country and the world, will take a longer period to realise.”

Chennai techie abducted for 8hrs, robbed of ₹45k

Kiran.Parashar@timesgroup.com

Bengaluru:04.02.2019

A 25-year-old software engineer from Chennai was abducted in a minivan, blindfolded, assaulted and robbed of ₹45,000 — all in a span of eight hours — before being abandoned by a four-member gang in Bengaluru in the wee hours of Friday.

Anurag Sharma, who works with Infosys in Chennai as a senior systems manager, was returning home after attending official work and a family event in Bengaluru.

Anurag was to leave for Chennai in a bus operated by SRS Travels around 11.50pm on January 31. “My bus was scheduled to arrive at the Bommasandra stop around 11.50pm but it didn’t. As I kept waiting, a Maruti Omni car pulled over near the Audi service centre in Electronic City phase-2. I approached the van to find out if they ferried people. There were two passengers and one of them told me that they were heading to Hosur. The next moment, the duo pulled me into the car, and two other strangers waiting at the bus stop too rushed in. They sped away immediately,” Anurag Sharma told TOI.

What followed next was eight hours of horror and inexplicable trauma. As soon as Anurag was dragged in, the miscreants began raining blows on him in the moving car. “One punched me with his fist, while the other hit me on my leg with an iron rod. They snatched my wallet and my mobile phone. They pinned me down to the car’s floor and then blindfolded me and made me immobile by wrapping a thick blanket around,” he said.

When they asked him for the debit card PIN, Anurag initially refused. He was then threatened at knifepoint, and fearing for his life, Anruag shared the PIN. “They may have driven me around the city as I remember being taken to at least four ATM kiosks. They had withdrawn ₹45,000 from my account using my debit card,” he said.

Every time Anurag tried to plead for his life, the gang members assaulted him. The horrifying episode played out until 8.30am on Friday, when he was finally thrown out of the van to a deserted stretch near Chandapura. An injured Anurag then managed to get himself admitted to Narayana Multi-Specialty Hospital. He later filed a complaint at Parappana Agrahara police station.

Anurag was working with the Mysuru Infosys before shifting to his hometown in Chennai. “I vividly remember two names — Rahul and Umesh — being used repeatedly by the gangsters,” he said.

DCP (south east) Boralingaiah said a hunt is on to arrest the gangsters. “We’ll arrest them in a day or two. We have got crucial clues and have identified the accused,” he added.

Anurag Sharma works with Infosys in Chennai as a senior systems manager

1ST ORDER UNDER CHILD RAPE LAW

Death warrant to MP teacher for raping 4-year-old

Ashutosh Shukla & Siddharth Pandey TNN

Jabalpur/Bhopal:04.02.2019

Satna district court has issued the “death warrant” against a schoolteacher convicted of raping a four-year-old child.

The child had to spend months in AIIMS-Delhi to recover after the attack, enduring multiple surgeries to get her intestines realigned.

The execution date for Mahendra Singh Gond has been fixed for March 2 in Jabalpur jail. Officials say he will be hanged unless SC orders a stay. From crime to confirmation of death sentence, it took only seven months. If he is executed, it would be the first under the new law to hang child rapists.

Gond had abducted the child on June 30, 2018, raped her in the jungles and dumped her there. Family members found her in the wee hours, barely alive, and took her to hospital. The state government immediately had her airlifted to Delhi. Police acted swiftly and arrested Gond within hours.

The conviction was unique since the survivor’s statement was taken via videoconferencing and was vital in proving him guilty. A division bench of MP high court confirmed the death sentence on January 25, 2019, holding his crime to be “rarest of rare”.

Justice P K Jaiswal and Justice Anjuli Palo said: “Courts cannot evade their duty to be tough with hardcore criminals so that there is some deterrent against indulging in such gruesome crimes, particularly because such crimes are on the rise. The incident assumes greater significance because the person involved is a teacher, who is supposed to teach lessons in morality to his students.”

Full report on www.toi.in

BDU among 7 TN varsities to have career hub for entrepreneurs

Sambath.kumar@timesgroup.com

Trichy:04.02.2019

Bharathidasan University has become one of the seven varsities in Tamil Nadu which will have entrepreneurship and innovation career hub at a cost of ₹15 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi digitally announced the launch of these hubs from Sher-e-Kashmir international convention centre (SKICC), Srinagar, on Sunday.

The hub will function as a separate entity in the university which will be registered under the companies act. The university will invite innovative ideas from students and develop them into a business model.

“We have been orienting students and faculty members on application-based research which will benefit society. Similarly, we are pushing for improving the rate of patent filing from the university. This funding is timely and we will make optimal use of it to give shape to innovative ideas from students,” he said. “We will rope in valuable resources and services to assist the students apart from providing career awareness, career information, and career planning,” vice-chancellor P Manisankar said.

“Under this programme, about 2.36 lakh students of Bharathidasan University, including those from 151 affiliated colleges, will benefit,” the vicechancellor said. The hub will be realized using a part of ₹50 crore given to university by ministry of human resource department under Rashtriya Utchar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) Phase – II which includes funding for research projects.

Six dead, 37 hurt as train to Delhi derails in Bihar

Kumod Verma, Debashish Karmakar & Ajay Pandey TNN

Patna/Hajipur:04.02.2019

At least six passengers died and 37 were injured when 11 coaches of the Delhi-bound Jogbani-Anand Vihar Seemanchal Express derailed at Sahadai Buzurg railway station near Hajipur, in Bihar’s Vaishali district, at 3.58 am on Sunday.

The accident site, around 50km from Patna, is a single-line section on the Barauni-Bachhwara-Hajipur route under Sonepur division of East Central Railway (ECR).

ECR officials said the coaches appeared to have derailed due to fractured rails. ECR chief PRO Rajesh Kumar said, “Rail fracture is common during winter. It is caused due to low temperature which damages tracks. The exact cause will be known after a probe by the commissioner of railway safety.”

Vaishali DM Rajiv Raushan said the deceased were identified as Sudarshan Das

(60), Ilcha Devi (60), Indra Devi

(65), Saida Khatoon (45), Ansaar Alam (21) and Shamshuddin Alam.

The DM said eight injured passengers were discharged from Sahadai Buzurg primary health centre while 29 others were admitted to the district Sadar hospital. “Seven of the 29 injured passengers were referred to Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) and one was in the ICU as his condition was serious,” Raushan said.

ECR general manager L C Trivedi said the reason behind the accident would be ascertained only after a probe by the commissioner of railway safety (CRS). “The CRS has been directed to start the probe tomorrow. It will take 15 to 20 hours to restore traffic on this section as nearly 300 metres of track have been badly damaged due to the derailment. We have to first remove the damaged coaches from the tracks. The electric wires will then be repaired to run the trains,” the GM told TOI from the accident site.

The CPRO said 12 unaffected coaches of the ill-fated train, with 1,500 passengers, were brought to Danapur from where they were sent to Anand Vihar Terminal by a special train. “The railways is providing all facilities to affected passengers, including ticket refunds for those who did not wish to travel further,” he said.

“Railways, the district administration and six NDRF teams carried out the search and rescue operations. Several ambulances and medical teams were pressed into action to move the injured passengers,” he said.

Surprisingly, antisocial elements pelted stones at the police, officials, rescue workers and others at the accident site in the afternoon without provocation. One person sustained head injuries in the incident.


IN A MESS: ECR officials said the coaches appeared to have derailed due to fractured rails

All parties are new now, after demise of popular leaders: TTV

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Trichy:04.02.2019

Putting down both the DMK and the AIADMK, Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) leader TTV Dhinakaran, on Sunday said all the political parties should be considered new in this general election following the demise of former chief ministers J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi.

He said in Trichy that the present AIADMK dispensation cannot claim the legacy of J Jayalalithaa after failing to implement the scheme she introduced. Giving examples like NEET, GST and hydrocarbon, he said the present government was supporting all the schemes that Jayalalithaa had opposed. On the DMK, he said that Tamil Nadu did not benefit at all in that one decade when the DMK was part of the Congress-led coalition at the Centre. “People of Tamil Nadu didn't fall for tall promises made by ruling BJP during previous general elections and stood by Amma. While all those promises have been proved lies, I am confident that you all would teach a lesson to the BJP and its supporter AIADMK in the general elections and remind them of the RK Nagar bypolls when they had lost deposits,” said Dhinakaran.

Saying that 20 vacant constituencies in the state will also go for polls with this general election, he asked people to vote for the victory of AMMK candidates and put an end to the Edappadi K Palaniswamiled government in