Gandhinagar: Students’ organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has demanded a Private University Regulatory Board in Gujarat. A motion for the same was passed in the recently concluded state convention of ABVP.

ABVP Gujarat Secretary Samarth Bhatt, while speaking to media persons today, said, ‘Gujarat has 65 private universities, including 25 that were set up in the last five years. The government has no control over them. It’s in the interest of the students that these private universities are regulated. It is not known how they handle the admission process, how they conduct the exams, and how they evaluate the performance of students. There’s no regulation on fees they collect. Some universities collect fees as high as Rs. 4 lakh for basic courses like BCom. It has come to our knowledge that in a single course, there was an intake of 2200 students in one university. Absence of a regulatory body creates serious issues regarding Gujarat’s future and quality of education.’

Bhatt added that the convention also passed a motion for corrective steps in the GCAS portal. He said the admission process through GCAS has benefitted the private colleges, while seats in government colleges stay vacant.

He said the ABVP also demands elections for student bodies. He said since the implementation of the Gujarat Public Universities Act, there’s no provision to hear the voice of the students. Bhatt also demanded an extension of the Shodh fellowship period to three years instead of two years at present. He also demanded more government medical colleges. ‘In the last 30 years, no govt. medical college has been established in the state. The last medical college run by the government was set up in 1995. There are only 6 government-run medical colleges in the state are present. The others are run through GMERS, also under the public-private partnership (PPP) model,’ he said. DeshGujarat