Devbrat Patnaik

Bhubaneswar: In a major development, Plus-II and Plus-III colleges functioning in conjunction will now be completely separated as two different colleges. The decision has been taken at a meeting convened jointly by the Higher Education and School & Mass Education departments today in Bhubaneswar.

The meeting discussed on division of staff, and other issues pertaining to land records and college infrastructure, the major verdict being the separation of physical infrastructure of Plus-II and Plus-III colleges.

State SME Minister Samir Dash said that though a few government institutions including BJB, Ravenshaw have separate Plus-II and Plus-III Colleges, it was decided in the meeting today that the ones which are still functioning as a single institution will be split into two.

For the next two months, a committee of the DHE will work on finding the mechanism to extract land record division for the said institutions.

Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Arun Sahoo clarified that the colleges will continue to function normally, and this decision will not affect academic events, whatsoever.

The colleges will impart teaching to students through the teaching and non-teaching staff from Higher Education Department, i.e. in case the Plus-II colleges face a shortage of teaching staff, teachers of Plus-III will take the classes. And once everything is streamlined, the senior lecturers will go back to their original posts, sources said.

The Minister also assured that the recruitment process for Plus-II colleges would be done in phases and will be completed in next 3-4 years.

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