Updated on: Friday, May 10, 2013
Every university and institute recognised by the UGC will have to set up a grievance redressal mechanism where students can lodge their complaints on matters related to admissions, irregularities, victimisation and sexual harassment.
The University Grants Commission today published a gazette notification about the UGC (Grievance Redressal) Regulations, 2012 which also seeks to set up an ombudsman for redressal of grievances of students.
The regulations stipulates every higher education institution for mandatory publication of prospectus, it content and pricing, each component of the tuition fee and number of seats approved for each course and programme.
Significantly, the regulations comes even as a number of legislations related to reforms in higher education, some of which seeks to achieve the above said purpose are stuck in Parliament for over two years now.
The regulations calls for setting up of grievance redressal committee, which would be constituted by Vice-Chancellor of an affiliated university and comprise of senior professor as its chairman and three senior teachers drawn from affiliating colleges on rotation basis.
The redressal mechanism would act as a platform where a student can not only lodge complaints against any irregularities in admission process, withhold or refusal to return any document or certificates, but can also lodge complaints of harassment and victimisation including sexual harassment.