Jammu emerging as North India’s education hub: Jitendra Singh

Jammu, Oct 18: Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Dr Jitendra Singh on Sunday said that Jammu is fast emerging as North India’s Education hub and it is a rare instance that within a radius of less than 100 kms, more than a dozen important professional and higher educational institutions have come up.
Singh said that institutions like AIIMS, IIT, IIM, two major Universities namely Central University and University of Jammu, four medical colleges including AIIMS, two Government run Engineering Colleges, etc as well as the upcoming North India’s first Biotech Technology Park cum Research Centre and the Bamboo Technology Training Centre through Ministry of Northeast are coming in the region.
Speaking after laying the foundation stone of the new education complex named after Pandit Madam Mohan Malviya, Dr Singh said, Central University Jammu is one of the first central universities in India to have such an educational complex named after Pt. Malviya.
He said, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee were among the leading academicians of the first half of 20th century but their contribution somehow did not receive the due recognition that it deserved and, therefore, this is a befitting tribute to both the luminaries.
He also recalled that recently he had the honour of inaugurating a hostel complex in the premises of the same university which is named after Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, which is possibly the first block to be named after Mookerjee in any government university outside Kolkata.
With the constitutional changes that took place after August 5, 2019, Dr Singh hoped that the biggest impediment in attracting the best of faculty from across the country for the educational institutions in this part of the country will be overcome.
He said, the standard of any institution can be maintained only when there is total professionalism and no compromise in the selection of scholars solely on the basis of merit and when the institution is ready to facilitate and incentivise best of the faculty from all over to come and take up teaching assignments there.
In this context, Singh again referred to Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and recalled that even in those times, Malviya had succeeded in persuading Dr S Radhakrishnan to give up his teaching job at Oxford and come back to take over as Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU).
Dr Singh said that through the Department of Space, of which he is in-charge, North India’s first Space and Research Study Centre has been started at Central University Jammu and Dr K Radhakrishnan, a world renowned Space Scientist who is also known as the father of Mars Mission, has been appointed as its advisor.
Similarly, Dr Singh said, the DoPT (Department of Personnel & Training), which is also under his charge, is working out the feasibility study of setting up the first of its kind Study Centre of Governance at Central University Jammu.
For any educational institution to receive a widespread recognition and identity, Dr Jitendra Singh said, there are essentially two prerequisites.
Either there should be extraordinary faculty which could produce research publications of international level or there should be exclusive departments of study which are not easily available elsewhere.

Vice Chancellor Prof Ashok Aima, in his welcome address, spelt out the various achievements of the university in the last few years.

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