New Delhi: Days after the University Grants Commission (UGC) directed colleges to create selfie points featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the background, the regulatory body has withdrawn the suggested designs linked to the directive.
The directive received significant backlash, with many saying that it was equivalent to a “cult-building” exercise while others called it a campaign for Modi ahead of the 2024 general elections.
The regulatory body did not specify why the designs were being withdrawn while the directive to set up the selfie points remains in place.
A UGC official on Saturday said modified designs might be issued, the Telegraph reported.
The UGC’s earlier directive said that each selfie point should be established at a strategic place on the campus and have a 3D layout. It also recommended various themes like internationalisation of education, unity in diversity, Smart India Hackathon, Indian knowledge system, multilingualism, and India’s rise in higher education, research and innovation for the photo-ops.
Approved designs related to each theme were available on a Google Drive link attached to the UGC’s letter. Each design carried a large image of the Prime Minister with certain representative pictures on the theme, the Telegraph report said.
The folder has been empty since Saturday afternoon.
A former UGC secretary told the paper that neither the regulator nor any educational institution had ever before been involved in promoting government agenda.
Also read: UGC Directs Maharashtra Universities to Celebrate RSS-ABVP Leader’s Birth Centenary
“Unfortunately, the present UGC under the chairmanship of Jagadesh Kumar is openly doing publicity for the government,” the former UGC secretary said. “This is not the job of the UGC. All government institutions and autonomous bodies are expected to be impartial. (But the) UGC is gradually becoming a wing of the ruling party,” he was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.
The former bureaucrat said that decision-making in the UGC used to be participative but “now, it’s one-way communication, and nobody else is allowed to speak.” He added that, “So many circulars are being sent to universities, with directives on almost every subject, that there is no space for creativity by any institution.”
Maya John, a member of the academic council of Delhi University, told the Telegraph that UGC’s letter on selfie points represented an overreach. “We as a university community are supposed to critically engage with, not valorise, the regime. We see the UGC’s letter as a breach in terms of its power,” she said. “It is unnecessary political interference. Universities are an autonomous open space; they are required to be kept autonomous.”
The letter on selfie points came on the heels of another such directive where the UGC had urged institutes of higher education in Maharashtra to celebrate the birth centenary year of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Dattaji Didolkar.
