Grant central university status to SKUAST-K: Varsity urges LG Sinha

Srinagar, Nov 24 (KNS): Sher-i-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences-Kashmir (SKUAST-K) has appealed to Jammu and Kashmir Lt. Governor, Manoj Sinha to grant central university status to the varsity.

An official of the university told Kashmir News Service (KNS) that SKUAST-K is the first agricultural university of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, established in 1982 with a vision to pursue teaching and conduct research and extension services in agriculture and allied sciences directed to food, nutritional and livelihood security.

He said that the varsity demands central university status and immediate attention the grounds that the university is housing five faculties and two colleges and has emerged as a leading University in Hill and Mountain Agriculture offering, undergraduate, Master's and Doctorate Degree Programmes with an operational area of around 923 hectares and 09th ICAR ranking out of 65 agricultural universities of India.

“To address the mandated activities, the university over the years had established new laboratories, classrooms, hostels, administrative buildings, student amenity and facility centre’s, farmers hostels, residential quarters, library services and information technology centre’s across the region,” he said.

The official said that an appreciable number of students from this University have qualified the Indian Administrative and allied services (IAS), Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS), Indian Forest Service (IFS), Agricultural Research Services (ARS) and other All India Level Competitive Examinations.

“The University was declared second and third best University at the National level for securing highest number of Junior Research Fellowships of ICAR and is continuously maintaining its performance at the National level,” he said.

He also said that registered PG students at the University are being awarded fellowships like ICAR Senior Research Fellowships, Inspire Fellowships, Maulana Azad National Fellowship, CSIR Fellowship, UGC Fellowship besides financial assistance from the University through merit scholarships or project assistance-ship.

“This has helped the University to pursue productive student’s research programme as a requirement for various degrees. The students who are graduating from this university are almost absorbed either in public or private and autonomous organisations is a major achievement.”

He said that the University has a sanctioned strength of 700 scientific, teaching positions and many were honoured by securing prestigious Raman Fellowships of UGC and DBT Crust Awards for advanced research at national and international levels.

“Every year good number of such national and post-doctoral fellowships are also secured by the scientists of this University for getting advance training in frontier research in the leading Universities abroad,” the official added. (KNS)

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