Nagpur becoming Education hub




By Vikas Vaidya

Like any other year, 2014 was also filled with events, some happy some otherwise, for the education sector of Nagpur. Resignation of Dr Vilas Sapkal as Vice-Chancellor of Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), the grand 100th convocation of RTMNU and declaration of IIIT and IIM at Nagpur can be called as major events of the year gone by.
Previous School Education Minister Rajendra Darda’s efforts of streamlining school education were laudable and would help generations to come. Now new Minister Vinod Tawde has all education-related portfolios.
The Nagpur Divisional Board continued working without full time Chairman and Secretary. The boycott by teachers organisation on valuation of university examinations. According to India Today survey, Nagpur topped in education in emerging city’s category.
In the aftermath of the cancellation of visit of President of India Pranab Mukherjee, the 100th convocation of RTMNU, which was supposed to held in 2013, had to be postponed. There were several issues that put the University in bad light like irregularities in holding of examinations, late declaration of results, students’ agitation, finally Dr Vilas Sapkal resigned. Dr Sapkal left when university’s budget was not passed. Chancellor office gave charge to Anoop Kumar, Divisional Commissioner and the things started working. Anoop Kumar went task after task. At first he got the budget approved, then various memorands of understanding (MoUs) were cleared, the issue of engineering examinations (carry on) got cleared. There were two major tasks— one was of holding 100th convocation and another was regarding visit of National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC). Both tasks were handled properly.
Dr A P J Abdul Kalam delivered the convocation address, founder of Param Computer Padma Shri Dr Vijay Bhatkar was given D.Litt. University got NAAC’s A grade accreditation. Anoop Kumar’s good work was scarred whenb Gurudas Kamdi, a Senate Member, filed petition in court wherein he questioned whether Anoop Kumar was eligible to hold the post or not. Chancellor’s office cleared the things but University politics prevailed. Fed up with this, Anoop Kumar made up his mind and left the seat. After him, Dr Vinayak Deshpande became Vice-Chancellor and Dr Murlidhar Chandekar the Pro-VC. Dr Chandekar is instrumental in streamlining the examination system in Mumbai University where cases of copying were registered.
Meanwhile, Dr Uma Vaidya, who became Vice-Chancellor of Kavikulguru Kalidas Sanskrit University, has changed the face of university. She shifted V-C office and residence to Ramtek which was a first in 15 years. The convocation was held for the first time at Ramtek.
Also, Vishram Jamdar added feather to Nagpur’s cap when he was made Chairman of VNIT.
On the flip side of the year, issue vacant seats in engineering colleges continued to haunt. The seat vacancy crossed 60,000. None approached the university in 2014 to start a new engineering college, and quite obviously so. The bogus marksheet scam that hit engineering admission in 2012 remained a mystery.
Former School Education Minister Rajendra Darda changed the face of his department. Declaring the timetable of the Board examination at the begining of the academic session, monitoring teaching, bringing new technology, checking the ratio of number of students to teachers, welcoming students to schools on first day by prominent leaders (this was to generate interest for education among children), implementing Right to Education project successfully in State. The credit of all these things should be given to Darda. On one hand when university teachers had boycotted the valuation and that agitation went on for 100 days, on the other, Darda meticulously brought end to the teachers’ agitation within three days of its start.
Former Guardian Minister of Nagpur Dr Nitin Raut had taken lot of efforts to bring Government Engineering college. It will be first in Nagpur division. No government engineering college remained which could fulfill the needs of students of this region after VRCE got converted into National Institute. The place was finalised in North Nagpur and GR in that connection was also issued. Secondly, Indian Institute of Information and Technology is coming to Nagpur. The place has fixed near Dongargaon behind Bar Wankhede Spinning Mill. It will be set up on 100 acre-land. The third big institute coming is Indian Institute of Management (IIM), the credit of which goes to Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister. Aurangabad people tried hard. Many industry associations stayed at Nagpur during winter session of State Assembly but nothing doing. CM did not utter a word outside the house but inside it, he announced one day. It is a gift from him to Nagpur. IIM will be starting functioning from this academic year from VNIT. Gradually it will shift to its own place at MIHAN. One officer who did groundwork in all these events is Gulabrao Thakare, Joint Director, Technical Education.
This government did a very smart move by giving all education related portfolios to Vinod Tawde. Tawde during his student days led the agitations for students and knows the core issues. It is expected that he would perform well.



RCOEM emerges best professional college

As was expected, Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management has emerged as India’s Best professional college. The prestigious Outlook magazine did a clandestine survey in which it has rated RCOEM as 47th top engineering college.
The college has been consistently ranked amongst the top engineering colleges in India by reputed ranking agencies such as ‘Outlook’ and Competition Success Review- Global Human Resource Centre owing to its excellence in the area of academics, industrial interface, infrastructure and placement. It has earned A grade by National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC). The NAAC peer team headed by former Vice-Chancellor of VTU, Belgaum Prof H P Khinchu spcifically mentioned and highlighted three things about RCOEM- 1. A linguistic minority college with highest rank in Vidarbha region, 2. Very committed and ethical management. 3. Good stakeholders relationships.
The college also got accreditation by National Board of Accreditation (NBA).
National Board of Accreditation (NBA) New Delhi has awarded re-accreditation to Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management (RCOEM) in B. E. Industrial Engineering programme for 5 years and in B. E. Computer Science and Engineering, B. E. Information Technology and B. E. Electronics and Communication programmes for two years each.   Earlier the other UG Engineering programmes as well as MBA programme offered by the College have been accredited by NBA.

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