The Union government has asked state agriculture universities to fill up vacancies urgently, else it would stop funding them. The Centre wants to link funding to filling up of posts, as quality in some of these varsities has worsened due to acute shortage of staff.

Officials said it was found as many as 45 per cent sanctioned posts in state agriculture universities were vacant, impacting the quality of teaching. The warning has been issued by the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), which is a sort of governing body of all agriculture universities in the country. The warning is part of the government’s efforts to improve the standard of agriculture teaching in the country.

GREEN PASTURE

The agri university network in India 60 State Agriculture Universities

2 Central Agriculture Universities

4 Deemed Universities

-4 Universities with Agriculture Faculties

70 Total

SAUs numbering around 60 are within the administrative control of state governments but receive significant support from the Centre.

“In many cases, we have found that SAUs do no fill their vacant posts. Sometimes vice-chancellors continue for years together, which severely impacts the quality of teaching. That is why we have decided to take this step,” a senior official said. This will also ensure that SAUs come up to international standards.

A standing committee of Parliament too had suggested that Central support to state agriculture universities should be stopped unless the vacancies are filled.

In the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-07 to 2011-12), around 21 per cent of the total allocation of ICAR, which was less than Rs 10,000 crore, was spent on SAUs.

Around 25 per cent of 160,000 students in the post-graduate courses and 15 per cent of 5,000- odd under-graduate students in agriculture universities across India are in SAUs. “We have set out quality standards for the Central Agriculture Universities (CAUs) and SAUs, which are unfortunately openly flouted by states,” the official said. He said because of the step-motherly attitude of some state governments to the agriculture universities, the students suffer as their employability goes down.

India has perhaps one of the biggest networks of agriculture universities in the world, comprising 70 agriculture universities, which also include two central agriculture universities, 60 state agriculture universities, four deemed universities and four universities where which has agriculture faculty like Aligarh Muslim University, Benaras Hindu University and Vishwa Bharti.