They also threatened to close down the college and hit the street if their demands are not fulfilled.
Narrating their ordeal, a girl student said, "We have staged dharna demanding basic necessities. The college premises and hostels are not getting cleaned or sanitised. We don't have permanent faculty for several courses due to which our institution is also facing issues in getting AICTE approval."
She said the B.Tech students are also facing placement issues but the concerned authorities and the principal seem to be blind to their problems even after repeated requests.
"The basic facilities which an engineering college should have are missing in our college. Students- from 1st year to 4th year- all are facing a lot of problems. In the last four years, five to six times students have resorted to strike, however, they have got only assurances that work will begin in a few weeks.But it never happened," said another student.
He further alleged that even though the hostel was converted into Covid care centre during lockdown, the college authorities didn't take any measures to sanitise the hostel before the entry of students. "Syringe, cotton and other medical materials were thrown and dumped in and around the hostel. There was no sanitisation before students' arrival," he said.
In the entire college, there is only one sanitiser dispenser that too in front of the principal's office, the students said.
"If our demands are not met, we will completely shut down the college and not allow anyone to conduct classes. We will also hit the streets with our demands," he added.
Responding to the allegations, the college principal Trilochan Sahoo said that several issues of the students have been resolved in the last 3-4 years. "Their major demand is recruitment of regular faculty. Our college was first under the Biju Patnaik University of Technology, so, the recruitment responsibility was with the varsity. It had also once released a recruitment notification for civil and computer science streams. Though a few recruitment was done for civil, there is only one regular faculty in computer science," he said.
"Recently, our college was entrusted with the faculty recruitment responsibility. Basing on that, we invited applications for unreserved Associate Professors and Professors. But government later directed us to keep reservation in the recruitment. As per the instruction and the vacancy in the college, we have already written to the State government," Sahoo added.
On placement issue, he said, "Keonjhar being a far off place from Bhubaneswar, campus placement is limited here. We had approached several software companies, but they were largely reluctant. So, last year, we approached a third party and placements are being done to some extent now."
Sobhen and his classmate Baba Shankar Das, both third year students of the institute, were arrested after the duo was found involved in harassing first year students of the college since past few days.
Protesting the humiliation, the juniors had gheraoed the District Collector’s office on Monday demanding stringent action against the senior students.
They had alleged that the seniors have been severely beating, torturing and threatening them in various ways. They further accused the college authorities of ignoring their complaints lodged earlier.
The third one was rescued by locals.
The mishap took place when the three students, who had gone to the spot for a picnic, went into the sea to take bath.
The Mangala river mouth is around seven km away from the Puri town.
According to the complainant, a student of the same institute had developed a one-sided affair with her and was forcing her to accept him. After repeated rejections, the girl said, she was allegedly beaten up by the boy time and again. Though she wanted to complain, she could only muster courage to speak it out to her parents. ‘’It was only after another girlfriend of the boy, asking me to bow down to the demands of the boy, beat me up in full public glare on campus yesterday that my family members reached here and took me to the principal. Even though I told the principal about the incident, no steps were taken,’’ the complainant said.
After the girls’ family reached the campus today that the boy apologized to her. ‘’The boy has been harassing my sister since the past one month. We tried to pacify the boy even through talking to her family but it seems, he never wanted to mend his ways,’’ said the brother of the complainant.
Principal of the College, Brajendra Narayan Routray who was was apprised of the matter yesterday said, ‘’ Only when she files a written complaint, we will form a committee to inquire into the matter and take action accordingly.”
Later in the evening, the Chandrasekharpur Police arrested the accused boy based on the complaint filed by the girl.
The tragic incident happened when the auto, the deceased Pinky Moharana of C. V. Raman College of Engineering and one of his friends Monali travelling in, overturned near Khandagiri last night. While Monali suffered minor injury, the auto driver fled from the spot.
Tension grew when some friends of Pinky demanded the hospital staffs to recheck her even though she was already declared death.
“We requested the hospital staffs to recheck her as she was still breathing after being declared death. We even pleaded to let us take her to a private hospital for treatment, but they didn’t heed our request. When we asked them to show Pinky’s death report, they blatantly told us to approach Khandagiri police,” told a friend of the deceased girl to media persons.
Khandagiri police have seized the auto but they are yet to comment on the allegations of the students.
According to a document obtained by OTV, Nayak was running his own Engineering College in Sahid Nagar and Bomikhal areas in Bhubaneswar in 1996. Later, showing feasibility report of this educational institution, he applied for land from the State government to set up a permanent campus. At that time there was no Trust but the whole institution was backed by a society.
Subsequently the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) recommended the government to provide land in favour of Nayak to set up a college.
However, after getting the land in question to set up an engineering college, Nayak sought government’s permission to build a hospital instead. Initially 5 acre land was sought, but in the span of 10 days, it was increased to 15 acre. Nayak got the approval as well.
Nayak’s approval from government to set up a hospital came at a time when few others were denied permission by the government to set up heath care units.
It was alleged that the BDA showing undue favor granted the said land to Nayak way below the market price and that too in installments. SUM authorities also went on to acquire land below high-tension electricity lines at half the market price.
While the land should have been given at institutional and commercial rates, they were given at residential plot rates, it was alleged. At that time, the BDA had filed a case against SUM for illegal construction. It was also alleged that SUM authorities grabbed the surrounding land meant for playground and public health centre for locals.
Moreover, in 2000 another case was filed against Manoj Nayak in Kharavela Nagar police station for allegedly selling engineering college seats to students with lower marks.
Source said, due to lack of students, the engineering college has been facing problems and decided to close down.
Moreover, as many as 21 private engineering colleges of the State are grappling with similar kind of problem as interest among students for engineering discipline dwindling leading to seat vacancies. All these institutions have sought scrapping of certain streams or decreasing their intake capacity. Applications regarding the same have been received by the Technical Education and Training Department from these engineering colleges, source added.
Even, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has been intimated about all the applications received from the engineering colleges seeking closure and downsizing, source said.
Due to this development, no admissions will be done for 1170 B-Tech seats, 72 M-Tech seats, and 250 seats in MBA and MCA disciplines.
The team from SR Engineering College, Warangal, will participate in the fifth annual challenge to be held on April 12-14, 2018, in Huntsville, Alabama, US.
It is one of the four teams from India short-listed to compete in the challenge. Students from 23 countries are participating in the challenge to create a buggey designed to traverse the simulated surface of moon.
The team, which will prepare a moon buggy design, report and submit their idea, will be led by faculty Manoj Chaudhary. It includes P. Paul Vineeth, Prakash Raineni, P.Sravan Rao, Rondla Dilipreddy Aand Venishetty Sneha, said a statement.
Congratulating the students, SR Engineering College Secretary A.Madhukar Reddy said it was a great opportunity to design, build, and test technologies that enable rovers to perform in a wide variety of environments.
The NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge began as the NASA Great Moonbuggy Race and was first held in in 1994, 25 years after the first manned Apollo landing on the moon.
The challenge now focuses on National Aeronautics and Space Administration's current plans to explore planets, moons, asteroids and comets.
During its 20-year run, the Great Moonbuggy Race engaged more than 10,000 students and demonstrated that these budding scientists and engineers were capable of complex work.
As per an official notification, the exams will commence from May 7 in online mode.
“The Odd Semester (Regular/ Back) Examinations 2020-21 (2nd Phase) is hereby rescheduled and shall commence from 07.05.2021. Further, the Odd Semester (Regular/ Back) Examinations 2020-21 (2nd Phase) will be held in online mode. The schedule will be notified in due course,” the notification read.
The University further directed all the colleges to upload the photographs, e-mail IDs and mobile numbers of all registered students on the web portal www.bputevaluation.com from April 15, 2021 which will remain open till April 19, 2021 (5 PM).
In a related development, the Odisha Skill Development And Technical Education Department has decided to conduct the Semester and Mid-Semester examinations of all technical universities and autonomous engineering colleges in online mode.
In a letter written to the Vice Chancellor of BPUT and VSSUT Burla, DTE&T Cuttack, Vice Chairman of SCTE&VT Bhubaneswar, Director of IGIT Sarang and the Principal of CET in Bhubaneswar, the department stated, “Due to the escalation of second wave of COVID pandemic in the State, the Government after careful consideration have been pleased to instruct the Technical Universities and Autonomous Engineering Colleges under the administrative control of Skill Development and Technical Education Department to conduct the forthcoming semester and mid-semester examinations in online mode until the situation improves. ”
Since, the examination process for the 1st, 3rd and 5th semesters of Diploma students has already started in all centres and will be concluded by April 21, 2021, the State government has allowed them to conclude the same in offline mode.
(Edited by Pradeep Singh)
According to the committee report, 87 per cent of all students enrolled in government schools manage to get less than 25 per cent of the seats in medical and engineering colleges. In contrast, only 11 per cent of all students enrolled in private schools manage to get between 57-63 per cent of the seats in these courses. This indeed is a major disparity, and the government has been right to identify the problem and call it out. But, while the problem identification has been on point, the solution through reservations defeats all logic. And more preposterous is the very tenuous and ham-handed attempt to establish the causal link between the problem and the solution.
Let us try to unpack some of the concerns here. Why is it that government school students are not able to qualify for these competitive examinations? If we go by the understanding of the task force and the government, it is because of the lack of coaching facilities which is in most cases a consequence of financial duress. ‘Physical and financial’ access barriers identified by the task force is a valid reason again, but the association of these barriers just to government schools proves to be a concern. In such a case it is not the type of school, but the income or asset stability of the family of the student which should come into question. A poor but brilliant student who manages to pay the fees in a private school but does not manage additional coaching, should also be eligible for such concessions and the large heartedness of the state. Secondly, physical access barriers will continue to exist for government school students based on their location. Students from government schools located in cities will still have it better than their counterparts in district and block headquarters who will have it better than those in villages.
So, there is enough reason to speculate that the quota will not address physical barriers to coaching and will be very selectively looking at financial barriers.
Let us go one layer deeper. If economically poor private school students are not being counted as the most disadvantaged by the government, it points to the acknowledgement that the pedagogy and nature of instruction is much better in private schools as compared to government schools. And that gives an edge to the students in the former. If this is the case, then the blame squarely lies on the service providers, the business owners who are not able to provide competitive instruction to their students, despite decades of running the business. The business owner in this case is the government. The difference in the quality of instruction in government-run CBSE schools and the performance of students from the board in competitive examinations, is another clear indication of the extreme importance of the quality of instruction in this issue.
But instead of pondering on why the quality of education has deteriorated in government schools, the government has taken the easy way out and used its power to skew the market through the introduction of a quota. While the problem clearly is one of a teaching crisis in government schools, the solution is one which is in no way going to even examine the problem identified.
The shortage of teachers along with the quality of instruction in government schools has been a cause of concern across the country and not just in Odisha. The increasing number of private school enrolments also indicate a major trust deficit in parents due to the deteriorating standards of government school teachers. The lack of competition in government schools, the involvement of teachers in clerical work and the lack of adequate training for teachers are some of the key reasons behind it. The learning outcomes at lower grades show the stark difference between the quality of education being provided in government and private schools.
The Odisha government is not the first state to implement such a quota. Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karnataka have versions of such a quota and they have been politically sound decisions to make.
Quotas as a populist measure work well to camouflage and sometimes even hide the absolute inefficacy of the government in running a business, which anyway ideally, it should not be running.
The government now can claim that this move will not only address the disparity it had identified but will also prove to be a way to increase enrolment in government schools. And all without putting in the actual effort of overhauling the quality of instruction in schools. There could be a number of things which could have been attempted, even in the short run. Scholarships, targeted coaching facilities, tailored support from earlier grades but that would require effort and commitment which is long term in nature. So reservations, are the easiest way out.
Morally, it is a dubious stand as it is not a solution, not even a temporary one. The government in this case has the unique ability to shirk responsibility and accountability, while running a business and at the same time skew the market to gain favourable outcomes. No private player has this luxury. It is due to these very reasons, that the root of the problem will continue to remain unaddressed. Treating public education as akin to discrimination and proposing affirmative action for it, does not at any level inspire confidence in the quality of the service being provided by the state.
(DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own and have nothing to do with OTV’s charter or views. OTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
READ | It’s Official! 15% Quota For Odisha Govt School Students In Medical & Engineering Courses
As per reports, the arrested officials were accepting a bribe of Rs 10 lakh at a luxury hotel in Bhubaneswar when the CBI personnel caught them red-handed.
Sources said that an employee from the engineering college was also arrested for bribing the trio.
As per a statement released by the CBI, "Officials laid a trap today against the aforesaid superintendents of GST & Central Excise who visited a hotel in Bhubaneswar to receive the alleged bribe amount. All were arrested while exchanging the bribe amount of Rs 10 Lakh between them."
After the arrest, the offices and residences of the accused have also been searched by the CBI sleuths.
No comments could be obtained from the authorities in this connection.
(Edited By Suryakant Jena)
In a statement, Amazon India said that the online preparation offering will equip students with in-depth knowledge and practice routines required for the JEE, through curated learning material, live lectures and comprehensive assessments in Math, Physics and Chemistry.
The beta version of Amazon Academy will be available free of cost on the web and the Google Play Store.
"Amazon Academy will offer students a range of JEE preparatory resources at launch, including specially crafted mock tests by industry experts, over 15,000 handpicked questions with hints and detailed step by step solutions for practice," it said.
Amazon Academy will also hold live All India Mock Tests (AIMT) at scheduled intervals. These tests are designed to mirror the JEE experience helping students understand the nuances of the examination.
The service enables active learning through live lessons, helping students to strengthen their JEE preparation efforts as they can engage with expert faculty, learn concepts, and clarify doubts in real-time. Bringing further discipline and rigour to their study methodology, it will offer scheduled lessons, daily practice problems and regular tests, starting with a crash course for the upcoming JEE Main.
Amazon Academy will help aspirants know where they stand with an All-India Rank for the respective mock test and assess their test performance through personalised reports highlighting chapter-wise time and strength analysis.
Amol Gurwara, Director, Education at Amazon India, said: "Amazon Academy aims to bring high quality, affordable education to all, starting with those preparing for engineering entrance examinations. Our mission is to help students achieve their outcomes while also empowering educators and content partners reach millions of students."
"Our primary focus has been on content quality, deep learning analytics and student experience. This launch will help engineering aspirants prepare better and achieve the winning edge in JEE," he said.
All learning material and exam content has been developed by expert faculty from across the country. In addition to the JEE, those preparing for BITSAT, VITEEE, SRMJEEE, and MET exams will also benefit from the quality content resources available, said the statement. The content is currently available for free and will continue to be for the next few months.
(IANS)
As per preliminary reports, the 21 positive cases include eight students and 13 teachers of the engineering college located on the western flank of the State.
Official sources said swab samples of 100 persons including some students were collected for tests after a positive case was reported from the college recently.
Apart from Jharsuguda, six Covid-19 cases were also detected at government high school in Binika area of Subarnapur district. The infected persons include four students and two employees, sources said.
It is pertinent to mention here that Odisha is witnessing a steep rise in the Covid-19 cases for the past one week. The State has been reporting 200-plus cases for in the last three days.
Earlier this week, 45 persons, including several students had tested positive at the Xavier Institute of Management (XIM) in Bhubaneswar prompting BMC authorities to seal the premier management institute. This was followed by a student testing positive at a Kendriya Vidyalaya in the State capital. Last week, a private college in Cuttack was sealed after over 25 persons tested positive for the virus. The virus scare has also hit the Ravenshaw university in Cuttack where 3 cases had been reported.
210 new Covid-19 cases were reported from different parts of the State in the past 24 hours. A maximum of 51 cases were reported from Khordha district, followed by 23 cases from Nuapada, Cuttack (19) and Bolangir (12).