NIT denied stipend, claims student

A full time student of PhD mathematics at the Dr BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology (NIT) said she had been denied stipend in the form of teacher assistantship as per the guidelines of the ministry of human resource development, even though she had gained admission in the course following high court directions.

The Punjab and Haryana high court had directed NIT Jalandhar to admit six PhD students, who were initially denied admission on unjustified grounds, in the mathematics program.

In June 2013, NIT had invited applications for the PhD course and declared the merit list after the result was announced in July. The interviews were also conducted but the result of PhD mathematics was not declared.

According to the RTI filed by one of the students, Isha Garg in December, it was found the result was delayed as it had not been signed by one of the committee members.

Garg filed a case against the institute in the high court after which admissions were invited. However, she said she was denied stipend along with the course.

“The institute is not providing the stipend despite the fact that the students are awarded scholarship-cum-teaching assistantship as per the guidelines of the ministry of human resource development. As per the recommendations of departmental admission committees, all the admissions in PhD full time for 2013-14 were made with stipend,” Garg said.

However, the institute said the students were misleading the media. MK Jha, dean of academics said, “The institute has only 31 teaching assistantship scholarships allotted for 13 different teaching departments for the academic year 2013-14 which have already been distributed.”

He added, “Out of 31, 50% scholarships are given to the reserved category students while the other 50% are distributed among the 13 departments. Each department gets maximum two scholarships.”

Jha said since there was a delay in admissions to the mathematics department, scholarships were distributed to other departments.

He added that Garg had been given admission to the PhD mathematics course without teaching assistantship as per the judgment of the high court. “She is approaching the press and other people in the institute to create a bad environment,” Jha added.

Isha’s father-in-law Ashok Kumar said this was a false claim by the institute as the institute had given stipend to 32 PhD students in the year 2013-14, out of which 20 were from the general category, a fact for which they had proof.