Central status nowhere in sight for AU

central status to over 114-year-old university of allahabad appears to be far away with union hrd minister m m joshi having said that presently it had yet to qualify for the same, though the ugc in its report has indicated that it qualified for that position and the said report was presented at a meeting of the university executive council some time back.the executive had hailed the ugc report, but the spirit of bravado was watered down by the hrd minister's remark at the special convocation in november last.the university's vice-chancellor, prof g k mehta, however, is not disheartened and has initiated several steps for procuring the much-needed funds for improving the university's infrastructural educational facilities which have been woefully lacking.now, the university is trying to get accreditated by the national academic accreditation council through which several benefits would accrue to it. it is trying to get itself registered with it so that it got entitlement for funding by it several academic activities to raise the teaching standards in the university.besides, the university has responded with alacrity to a ugc letter to grant recognition to it as one of the universities of excellence. last year the ugc had granted this status to five universities in the country and this year it intended to grant this status to 10 to 15 other universities.under this scheme the universities have to fill up a profarma provided by the ugc indicating as to how many of the teachers held ph d, d litt or d sc degrees, how many of them had attended international/national seminars in the areas of their specialisa tion, the teacher-taught ratio, student-non- teaching staff and teacher-non teaching staff ratio, infrastructual facilities such as labs, libraries, play ground etc.the university has already been granted a chair for study in patents, steps are underway to set up a regional institute for nano-sciences, an entirely new area of research, under the inter- disciplinary teaching department.the main hurdle in granting central status to the university, say informed sources on the campus, are associated degree colleges which are in good many numbers. only one of them, the ewing christian college, has been granted independent status. the re maining too would have to be granted independent status or they may have to be encouraged to seek affiliation to other universities and only then the university might qualify for a central status.