Power generators worth Rs 50 lakh lie unused and gather dust in BU

BHOPAL: Quality education, or providing a self-sustaining revenue model in an era of industry and institutes linkages well have never been strong points of Barkatuallh University. But expecting judicious use of big ticket spending on machines or research equipment is not asking for much. But here is an example that turns the

logic

on its head. Some six electricity generators worth Rs 50 lakh are just lying there in teaching departments of university for years.

When the media brought it to the notice of BU acting registrar Ajit Shrivastava, he said he would get the matter probed. The acting registrar told TOI, “I will look into the matter. It should not have been done,” said Shrivastava.

During tenure of former vice-chancellor Prof Nisha Dubey, generators were bought around 5 years ago with an idea to provide back-up support in case of power failure. “It was a good idea to keep classes going during power failure and in peak summer period. Unfortunately, big generators have become decorative pieces,” said a senior teaching faculty of BU without quoting his name.

Such is the situation even students and teaching faculty do not know generators are available on their campus. “This is surprising for me. Only you are telling me there are generators on the campus. We had to stop laboratory work whenever electricity was not available. BU should conduct a thorough inquiry as why these giant generators were never used,” said a teaching faculty in

physics

department.

Students, who know that generator is available in physics said they had informed authorities several times, but nothing was done. “This is a perfect example of corruption in BU. We had informed higher-ups about it in the past, but they never bothered about it. They did not even have time to direct electrical engineers to make generators functional,” said the students without quoting his name.

The situation in law department is worst. “Few months ago students, when there was no power on the campus, students told us to use generator. I was shocked when I checked the generator. Forget about wire connections, there was nothing inside the generator. It was just an iron cover,” said a teaching faculty. Students said like optical fibre cable (OFC) went missing from campus, generators are also not functional. “OFC was laid almost a decade ago. Now, BU is not able to trace. Similarly, generators are there, but of no use,” said RTI activist Dharmendra Gour. He will file a complaint to Raj Bhawan against those who kept generators.