Bifurcation Of Directorate Of Colleges: Govt puts proposal on back burner

Jammu: The government seems to have put the proposal of bifurcation of Directorate of colleges into the back burner as no headway has been made on the issue since the process was started about five months back.

Sources informed that the Higher Education department had mooted a proposal to establish separate Directorate of colleges for Kashmir and Jammu around four to five months back and submitted to the government.
“The file related to bifurcation was sent to Finance department for getting financial concurrence. Around fifteen days back the Finance department returned the file with certain queries, but was never returned,” sources said.
They said that some senior officers in the education department are creating hurdles in the process as they are not in favour of the two Directorates.
As per the proposal of bifurcation, there would be two separate directorates for Kashmir and Jammu divisions. “At present there are 45 colleges in Jammu division and 50 colleges in Kashmir division, including Leh and Kargil. All these colleges fall under single directorate and the department was facing hurdles to manage all works with limited manpower,” sources said.
They said that many new colleges were in pipeline and to cope up with increasing work load, the Higher Education department felt the need to bifurcate the directorate and initiated the process.
“Since a higher official of Higher Education was transferred, the file is lying with the department as some of the officials in directorate colleges are unhappy with the proposal and are creating hurdles,” sources added.
They said that fearing decentralization and dilution of power and benefits, some employees and officials do not want bifurcation and are creating hurdles.
“Presently the office of Directorate Colleges is in Civil Secretariat and the employees are enjoying all privileges, being enjoyed by Darbar move employees. If the bifurcation is done, there will be separate offices in the two divisions. The office of Directorate colleges will also be evicted from secretariat. Fearing decentralization and dilution of power and benefits, some employees and officials do not want bifurcation and are creating hurdles,” sources said.