BHU 'dupes' students by cancelling course after admission

Varanasi, Aug 23 (UNI) Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has allegedly cancelled the course in which three students had enrolled on August 3.

Vishal Kumar and Sudhir Kumar Dwivedi today alleged being duped by the BHU administration, which has cancelled the one-year post graduate diploma course in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

''How can the varsity play with our future by cancelling the course for which we had been enrolled on August 3 last. Both of us have left jobs and admission to other courses for being enrolled into this course to be run at the Faculty of Law, BHU South Campus in Barkachha (Mirzapur). On August 15, a day before commencement of classes we were informed by the Course Coordinator B N Pandey that we should get refund of our fees Rs 22,201, as the course has been cancelled due to insufficient number of candidates,'' Vishal and Sudhir, residents of Sasaram (Bihar) and Faizabad (UP) respectively said.

Admitting that a mistake had been made by course coordinator Prof Pandey and Dean of Faculty of Law by admitting three students -- Vishal, Sudhir and Manoj Verma (Lucknow) into the course -- despite the criteria of minimum ten students not being met, varsity higher officials expressed inability to run the course saying it was not sustainable to run the course for three students only.

''Despite being told that admission will only be possible if there would be a minimum of ten applicants willing to take admission in the course, Prof Pandey made a mistake by enrolling the three students into the PG diploma course even as the total number of applications in the course stood at nine only,'' In charge of BHU's Rajiv Gandhi South Campus Shivraj Singh said.

''A mistake has been made by Faculty of Law which was supposed to run the course, but we have no other option but to cancel the course as it will not be possible to sustain it with three students only,'' he added.

While one of the students Vishal claimed to have skipped two job offers -- with CRY, an NGO in Mumbai and primary school teacher job in Bihar -- for the sake of pursuing the PG diploma in IPR, Sudhir is indecisive at going for counselling of LLM course in Allahabad.

''Why did they give us admission when the total number of applicants in the course was below the required minimum of ten candidates,'' both Sudhir and Vishal questioned.

While, Manoj Verma had been refunded the Rs 20,000 sum of course fee, both Vishal and Sudhir are hell-bent at not taking back their deposited sum and instead want to pursue the course.

Both the students have also threatened to go the Allahabad High Court, if the BHU administration does not reverse its decision.

UNI