New satellite campuses open ahead of elections

India’s central universities are opening satellite campuses in remote locations in a move ostensibly driven by the desire to provide quality education to people in those areas, writes Prashant K Nanda for Livemint.

But one academic has pointed out that the move may be driven by a desire to score points with the electorate ahead of the general election scheduled for 2014. Indeed the federal government, under whose Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry central universities fall, is already taking credit for opening more Indian institutes of technology and Indian institutes of management in smaller towns, in a high-decibel ad campaign that many see as part of the government and the Congress Party’s extended run-up to the election.

Last Friday, HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju laid the foundation of the Hyderabad-based English and Foreign Languages University’s campus in Shillong. Last week, Hyderabad-based Maulana Azad National Urdu University announced its Srinagar campus, and Aligarh-based Aligarh Muslim University, after opening satellite campuses in Kerala and West Bengal, is setting up another campus in Bihar.
Full report on the Livemint site