Bengaluru (Karnataka) : Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah instructed the officials to take action to distribute laptops to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students of universities in the state.

The decision was taken in a meeting of the vice-chancellors of universities under the purview of the state government and senior officials of the higher education department.

Chief Minister instructed P Manivannan, Principal Secretary, Social Welfare Department, over the phone during the meeting to allot Rs 230 crore for this purpose.
Laptops should be distributed to every student of all communities in universities. Necessary action will be taken for this in the coming days, he said.

There are more than 50 per cent vacancies against sanctioned posts in Universities and only 1882 posts are filled. The vice-chancellors and officers brought to the notice of the Chief Minister that the salaries of 2865 guest lecturers are being paid from the resources of the universities, which is a financial burden on them.

The officials further briefed that even though the old universities are divided, only the old universities are disbursing the pension.

Due to this, the financial burden of old universities has increased. Rs. 5470 crore budgetary allocation is made in the current budget and there is shortfall of Rs. 2474 crores for Higher education sector, the officers explained.

On establishing new universities in the state, the Chief Minister said, "Budget allocation is decreasing while the recurring cost is increasing. How can we expect quality education from this? In addition, in the budget of the higher education department, 88 per cent of the grant is used for salaries."

The Chief Minister suggested that Visvesvaraya Technical University should develop a curriculum that is in line with the demands of industries and lay emphasis on flexible education to provide more employment opportunities to engineering graduates.

Earlier today, after meeting with representatives of different educational institutions and officials in Bengaluru on Monday, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said that the state government will form a new education policy scrapping the National Education Policy, 2020.

“We had serious discussions about the education policy and the meeting was attended by representatives from various educational institutions and other officials. We have decided in our manifesto to discontinue the NEP 2020,” DK Shivakumar said.

He further said that states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala have already scrapped the policy adding that the government will constitute a new committee to work on a new education policy for the state.