The government PU college at Vadagera in Shahapur Taluk has been shifted to the campus of the Marikamba primary school at Sirsi in Uttara Kannada, the home district of Primary and Secondary Education Minister Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri.
The move has come under criticism as Gulbarga district, of which Yadgir was earlier a part, recorded a low female literacy rate of 37.9 per cent in the 2001 census. On the contrary, Uttara Kannada district had recorded a female literacy rate of 68.47 per cent.
What has irked the people is that instead of starting more educational institutions in a backward district, the government has taken away the one already present.
Prompting the government’s move is the thought that it is better to transfer colleges with less than 25 per cent of the prescribed student strength, says the order from the under secretary of the department of pre-university education.
The Vadagera college has been shifted, along with the staff and if there are II PU students present, they will be absorbed into the nearest government or aided PU college. But what the government does not seem to know is that there are no government or aided PU colleges in the vicinity.
In the district, there are 45 government colleges. Of these, 23 are government-run colleges, three are aided and 19 are unaided. But the number clearly isn’t enough for the PU students in the district. This has resulted in the overcrowding of the colleges. One example is the Yadgir Boys’ PU college, which has a student strength of 1,500. If the government really wanted to shift the college, it could have been shifted to a place which really needed one, say the people.
Meanwhile, former MLA Veerabasavantareddy Mudnal asserted that he would meet Kageri in Bangalore on Thursday and prevail upon him to retain the college in Vadagera.
Shifted second time
The college had been started when Dr A B Malakareddy, then Yadgir MLA, was the Health Minister in the S M Krishna ministry. In just a couple of years, the college was shifted.
When Dr Veerabasavantareddy Mudnal was the local MLA, the college returned to Vadagera due to the insistence of the local people.
Just when things were looking good, the student strength started dropping again, leading to the present move to shift it to Sirsi.
The decline of the college is attributed to the negligence on the part of the lecturers. The teachers were lacking in efforts to get students of government high schools to join the Vadagera college, the people say.
Shifting the college will spell doom for students passing the SSLC in the Halagera, Konkal, Bendegambali, Vadagera and Tumkur villages.