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Front Page >> Editorials > Story

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Unexplained Points
It is always with a heavy heart and a sense of tragedy that we at The Sangai Express have been publishing news regarding Manipur University and as regular readers of our paper will know, none of the news have painted MU in any positive light. We would also like to lay it down in unambiguous terms that we take no sadistic pleasure in exposing, what are undoubtedly skeletons, in the highest seat of learning and though certain section of the State media may term such expose' as washing dirty linen in public, we feel that drawing such an analogy would be missing the target, not by inches but by miles.

Anyway, this is a free country and all are entitled to their view points but as members of the fourth estate and as die hard professionals who are here to disseminate information to the public, we feel we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the going-ones inside the sanctum sanctorum of the university. We hold on to this position, not from any high moral ground or a sense of self righteousness but out of a desire to see that at least some mechanisms are there to act as the check and balance. During the last few months, we have published a number of news items that have cast MU not in particularly good light and we do not apologize for that.

The expose' that our paper ran on the allegations of question leakage in the MA final year examination in Political Science paper, the goof up committed by the MU authority in placing a student in the second division, while in fact the student had secured more marks than the student placed in the second position and the recent report concerning the selection test for recruiting guest lecturer in Bio-Chemistry, did not say anything positive about MU. We ran these stories not to get into the bad books of MU authority but to contribute our mite in making the university a more suitable place for students to pursue their academic career.

Manipur University has sounded the ‘procedural lapses’ theory with regard to the selection procedure conducted to select a guest lecturer in Bio-Chemistry. It is perfectly alright for the university authority to reject any selection process if there are any lapses and in such cases, we feel no one should question the decision of the university authority. However there are too many slips between the cup and the lip for comfort and it is for this precise reason that we ran a story on the August 29 edition under the caption, "Double cross slur casts on MU."

Records available with us say that the announcement of recruiting the guest lecturer was broadcast some time in the first week of June this year. The interview was held on July 11 and altogether four candidates appeared before the 6 member selection committee for the interview. Then in an abrupt U turn MU, without declaring the results, placed an advertisement calling for a fresh round of interview to select the guest lecturer. The MU authority has already announced to the State media that the earlier interview was rejected as there were some procedural lapses. The media was also informed that the decision to scrap the first interview was taken after due consultation and the decision was intimated to the HoD concerned on July 18.

As MU admitted, the decision to scrap the first interview was not broadcast through the media on the ground that there is no precedence to go to the media on such matters. We really do not know if MU is bound or not to announce its decision to the public but we at least expect that the decision should also have been intimated to all the four candidates, especially after one candidate's name had been recommended for the post. And we may also ask what the procedural lapses were all about. If at all, there were some lapses, what is stopping the MU authority from taking up action against the selection committee concerned, given that one candidate had already been recommended? There are just too many unexplained points.

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)

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