GUWAHATI, Dec 11 � The Cotton College Retired Teachers� Forum has pleaded for steps to restore the status and property of the 110-year-old Cotton College. The College has been stripped off its historic campus, buildings, library, laboratories, hostels etc, along with the postgraduate (PG) departments with the passing of the Cotton College State University Act, 2011 and the Cotton College State University (Amendment) Act, 2011.
The status of this historic College has in fact been lowered to the level of an ordinary degree college with the above legislations, alleged the Forum in its memorandum submitted to the Chief Minister recently.
By defining the College as a constituent college of the Cotton College State University (CCSU), the legislation has betrayed its long-cherished dream of upgradation.
The preamble and Articles 2, 5 and 6 of the legislation are contradictory and the government has overlooked their inherent contradiction.
Cotton College, which was set up in 1901 as a degree college under the Calcutta University, later became the most outstanding college of the NE region. It became a full-fledged PG institution, integrated with undergraduate education and perhaps the only one of its kind in offering quality education from the Higher Secondary level to the PG level. It produced the first PhD of the Gauhati University Dr KM Pathak, who worked under the guidance of Dr Govinda Chandra Deka, who was a teacher of Cotton College. The research for the purpose was done at the Cotton College Physics Laboratory.
Prior to the passing of the above legislations, PG teaching was done in the College in as many as 21 subjects and it had an area of around 34 acres. Its facilities included well-equipped laboratories in different science subjects, an enviably rich modern library with a vast stock of books, journals and rare manuscripts.
It was declared a PG institution by the then President of India Dr Shanker Dayal Sharma at a glittering function held in the College premises on October 17, 1992. It had 5,000 students and 250 teachers, including the ad-hoc faculty members, before being degraded to a degree-level college.
Though the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) accredited the College as a Grade-A college in 2004 and 2011, it has now become a big question as to what grade it would be accorded by the NAAC this time, since the college has lost everything, said the Forum in its memorandum.