JALUKBARI, Aug 30 - The All Assam Government Engineering College Students� Union including the Assam Engineering College Students� Union staged a demonstration in front of the Assam Science and Technology University (ASTU) office at Tetelia here today for trying to change the affiliation of the engineering colleges to ASTU against the will of the students and teachers.
Talking to this correspondent, Abinash Medhi, general secretary of the AEC Students Union said the Government of Assam had recently tried to change the affiliation of the prestigious AEC, JEC and other government engineering colleges of the State to the ASTU. The colleges are already affiliated to the Gauhati University and Dibrugarh University since inception. Following strong protests and rejections from the students and the teaching fraternity, the decision is yet to make any headway. He further said that since the newly formed ASTU neither has proper infrastructure nor NAAC accreditation, it would harm the career of the students.
The proposed move would also undermine the future of the students who got admitted into the engineering course after cracking JEE.
Medhi further alleged that following pressure from the government, the Jorhat Institute of Science and Technology (JIST) and Bineswar Brahma Engineering College (BBEC) in Kokrajhar applied for ASTU affiliation on August 14. A similar pressure is being mounted on the AEC and JEC also, he said.
The students urged Education Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma to listen to their grievances and comply with their demand.
It may be mentioned that the move to change affiliation of the government engineering colleges started on January 19, when ASTU officials invited faculty members of the AEC to a meeting to discuss academic collaboration of ASTU with AEC. Twenty-three teachers from the AEC were present at the meeting.
Interestingly, the ASTU officials allegedly sent minutes of the meeting to the government suggesting falsely that the AEC teaching fraternity wanted their college to be affiliated under ASTU, when no such commitment was made by them at the meeting. Misrepresented by the ASTU officials, the Government of Assam ordered the Director of Technical Education, Assam to direct these colleges to apply for affiliation to ASTU.
It has been further alleged that a similar situation had arisen in 2014 when the government sent letters to the principals of these colleges asking them to change their affiliation to ASTU, but with rejection and strong protests, this decision was called off. A meeting will be held on September 1 among all the stakeholders to discuss the future course of action to be taken.
Meanwhile, AEC Principal Atul Bora said, �We are comfortable with the Gauhati University and everything is running smoothly in the academic sphere. So there is no question of changing the affiliation. Again, ASTU is a newly establish university, so there are drawbacks. If we change the affiliation we will be deprived of many facilities in the academic field. So our students and teachers are not ready to change affiliation. The AEC authority will not take any decision against the opinion of the students and teachers.�
