Kurukshetra University yet to decide on reopening of classrooms

Even as the Haryana government has allowed reopening of universities and colleges amid the Covid-19  outbreak to enable the students to seek guidance from their teachers, the management of the Kurukshetra University is yet to take a decision to reopen its classrooms for all students after a gap of more than six months. 

As per the information following the guidelines issued by the union government under Unlock phase 4, the higher education department has asked all universities and colleges in the state to complete all safety protocols related to COVID-19 and respond by Friday. But the officials of the Kurukshetra University said that as of now the decision to open classrooms for all students was not taken yet as it is “very unsafe” to open the classrooms with the number of cases still on the rise.   

Even, the officials said that following a letter from the Department of Higher Education the management of the university held a meeting and the university has written to the government that it was considering reopening the classrooms only for the 175 Ph D students on a trial basis as their lab work was suffering. 

However, the faculty of the university was busy conducting the exams of the final year students, and the decision to reopen classrooms for all students will be taken later. As per the information, the management of the university will soon call a meeting in this regard and the decision will be taken on how and when the university could open its classrooms for the students.   

Talking to Hindustan Times, Brajesh Sawhney, Director Public Relations of KU said that the government had sought responses from the universities on how to reopen the classrooms.   “We have 14500 students and 5500 stay in hostels and we will hold a meeting in this regard to finalize how the classrooms will be reopened”, he added.

He said that after taking the decision the instructions will also be issued to the colleges affiliated with the University.   As per the information, the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines the delayed academic session for freshers in Universities and Colleges will reopen from November 1, and the UGC has directed the educational institutions to complete the admission process by October.  “The priority will be to reopen the classrooms for freshers and a detailed procedure will be prepared to reopen the classrooms for them”, said a senior official of the Kurukshetra University.