Srinagar: The Higher Education Department has been unable to shift its first engineering college to permanent campus, two years after the institute was established.
Officials maintain the process was halted due to lockdown in Kashmir, which began with the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5.
The college is one of two institutes in J&K established under the Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) in May 2017. It is coming up at Safapora in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district. The other college is in Jammu.
However, two batches of students admitted at the college have been taking classes at Government Degree College, Sumbal since 2018.
A teacher at the Engineering College said it was getting difficult for them to function at GDC Sumbal, as a full fledged college is already running from there.
“So you can imagine it. We don’t even know when the Ganderbal College will start functioning,” he added.
The teacher said they had begun to shift students to Ganderbal campus but the process was affected due to the lockdown.
Principal, GCET Ganderbal, Prof Rauf Ahmad Khan asserted there was “no space crunch at GDC Sumbal as such”.
“But what can you do with the current unrest,” he added.
While the process of shifting the two enrolled batches comprising of around 500 students was on, Prof Khan said the incoming batch will “hopefully take classes at Ganderbal campus”.
He said three building blocks are to be constructed at Ganderbal campus in phases by the JKPCC, the executing agency of the project.
“But the space set up at the campus so far will hopefully suffice us”.
Prof Khan said the college administration was for now preoccupied with examinations, and would focus on completion of the Ganderbal campus once they were done with the exams.
“We are trying to give best possible help to the students,” he said.
He informed that Civil, Electrical and Electronics, Mechanical, Computer and Biomedical branches of engineering were being offered at the institute.
Secretary Higher Education Department, Talat Parvez said they had shifted one of the two batches to the Ganderbal campus while the process to shift the other was on.

Irshad Khan