J-K govt orders appointment of VCs of 2 cluster varsities

Setting the ball rolling to make cluster universities functional from the current academic session, Jammu and Kashmir government today ordered appointment of Vice-Chancellors and Registrars for two new varsities in the state.
Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who is Chancellor of these Universities, has ordered to appoint Anu Bhasin, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Jammu as the Vice Chancellor of the Cluster University, Jammu and Sheikh Javid Ahmed, Dean Research at the University of Kashmir as the Vice-Chancellor of Cluster University, Kashmir.
Bhasin is a proficient researcher with more than 28 years of experience in Experimental Particle Physics and has 355 publications in referred and reputed international journals.

She has the distinction of being an elected member of Management Board (Jan 2017-Dec 2019) of ALICE Experiment, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.
Prof Ahmed studied at IIT Mumbai and obtained his PhD degree in Theoretical Physics in 1987.
He has published more than 125 papers in the prestigious journals and some of his publications are among top cited papers in Nuclear Physics.

The tenure of the Vice-Chancellors of the Cluster Universities shall be for a period of five years from the date they assumes office.
In another order, the Chief Minister has appointed Yaseen Ahmad Shah, Principal S P College, Srinagar as the Registrar of Cluster University, Kashmir and Jatinder Khajuria, Joint Registrar (Finance), University of Jammu as Registrar of Cluster University, Jammu.

The Cluster Universities have been established in the state under centrally-sponsored Rashtriya Ucchtar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) to run series of additional and advanced courses in the existing colleges, with one of the colleges each in Srinagar and Jammu acting as lead college for the varisites.
The government has already approved creation of 124 posts for these Universities.
All the participating colleges will be converted into constituent colleges of the Cluster University.
"Setting up of Cluster Universities will not only augment the existing higher education facilities in J&K, but help diversification of the academics with introduction of latest job-intensive courses at the graduate, post-graduate and diploma levels," Education Minister Naeem Akhtar said.

"The move shall go a long way in expanding access to higher education by increasing the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in the state," he said.
He added that these university will offer post-graduate and diploma courses in liberal arts, science, humanities, social sciences,engineering, teacher education, languages, entrepreneurship development, management and other job-intensive courses.
With the setting up of the two Cluster Universities in J&K, the total number of nniversities in the state has gone up to 11.