After an uproar from students over the seat slashing in JNU, the HRD minister Prakash Javadekar retorted saying some JNU professors were guiding close to 20-25 PhD scholars, which was unheard of anywhere else in the world. The minister made the statement during the Question Hour in Rajya Sabha when members expressed their concerns over the imposition of the UGC guidelines on the university resulting in the seats getting slashed by 83 percent.
When questioned about the drop in the number of PhDs in the country, Javadekar said that only in India "we want more PhDs" while in the rest of the world the numbers were even lesser. UGC guideline mandates a fixed number of students per professor, which is why there will be absolutely no intake this year in many of the major centres of study this year.
He stated that since lots of vacant teaching positions are filling up the number of research scholars would go up too.
Javadekar made no mention about the deprivation points citing that the court had directed the university to implement the UGC guidelines. At an event held recently, Javadekar expressed the desire to do away with the reservation system and have admissions based purely on merit.
