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February 22, 2018

N Gopalaswami, Head of RSS Education Wing to Select India’s 20 ‘World Class Institutes’ | news18.com

news18.com

Former CEC N Gopalaswami, Head of RSS Education Wing to Select India’s 20 ‘World Class Institutes’
Gopalaswami is the head of Vivekananda Educational Society, which is affiliated to RSS’ educational wing Vidya Bharati or Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan.

Eram Agha | News18.com :February 21, 2018, 9:27 AM IST

Former CEC N Gopalaswami, Head of RSS Education Wing to Select India’s 20 ‘World Class Institutes’
File photo of Ex-CEC N Gopalaswami. (Facebook photo)

New Delhi: Former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami will head the Empowered Expert Committee constituted for selecting 20 institutes of higher education that will be developed into ‘World Class Institutes’.

Gopalaswami is the head of Vivekananda Educational Society, which is affiliated to RSS’ educational wing Vidya Bharati or Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development approved the constitution of the EEC as per UGC regulations of 2017.

While Gopalaswami will be the chairperson, Tarun Khanna of Harvard Business School, Houston university chancellor Dr Renu Khator and Dr Pritam Singh, a former director of MDI Gurugram and IIM Lucknow, will be the others on the panel.

The Modi government had also made Gopalaswami the chief of a 13-member panel in 2015 that was constituted to recommend ways of Sanskrit promotion.

The HRD ministry had last year invited institutes to apply to be upgraded into “world-class universities.” It had received 100 applications, including from seven IITs, Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jadhavpur University, Goa University and Mangalore University.

The O P Jindal Global University, Ashoka University, Manipal University and Amity University, among others, had applied from the private sector.

Ten universities from the public and private sector will be selected for the programme in the next few months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised Rs 10,000 crore over the next 10 years and autonomy to these institutes.

The EEC’s role would be to scrutinize the proposals submitted and monitor and review their implementation plans. After hearing their presentations, it would then rank the institutions for their suitability for inclusion in this scheme. It would forward its selection to the UGC, which will submit it to the HRD ministry to take a final call.