New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India’s top ranked university in general category by NIRF 2016, is expected to release the admission notification for the academic year 2017-18 very soon (may be this week or next week).  Vice Chancellor of the University, Mr M Jagadesh Kumar, informed via a statement uploaded on the JNU website that after prolong protests by the students over the UGC MPhill/PhD Regulations 2016, the administration building of the university has started functioning yesterday (27 February 2017).

The JNU administration and Vice Chancellor of the University expressed willingness to meet student representatives to discuss with them UGC 2016 Gazette Notification and JNU Admission policy.  The VC of the University said that the officers, administration staff and employees of JNU have started their work immediately and the pending work will be completed as soon as possible. Generally, the JNU releases official admission notification for all courses including UG, PG and PhD degrees in the second week of February month of the each year.  Hence, now it is expected that the admission notification may be released very soon.

Earlier, the JNU administration had clarified that the  UGC 2016 Gazette Notification is not retrospective and therefore, all the students who have been already admitted in MPhil/PhD programmes will not be affected. Further, the university mentioned that there will not be any seat cut in MPhil/PhD programmes in the forthcoming academic session. Except those faculty, who are supervising more than the UGC prescribed upper cap while for all the other faculty who are supervising less than the UGC prescribed upper cap will admit more students.

With the excess number of students who are already working in the University and new students to be admitted in July 2017, the total number of MPhil and PhD students in the university will be far in excess of the upper cap of students prescribed by the UGC. Hence, the university claimed that the seat cut is a misinformation campaign.

Further, the JNU administration mentioned that the university has already advertised more than 300  faculty positions and as the recruitment process is over,  the number of students who can be admitted in MPhil and PhD programs will accordingly increase.

 As per the Annual Report 2015-16 of the university, there were a total number of 8,432 students in JNU as on 31 March 2016. Out of which, research students (MPhil, PhD/MTech, PhD/Direct PhD) represent the largest group with a total number 5,219, which was 62%. The university has awarded PhD degree to 601 students, MPhil degree to 555 candidates and graduate degree to 241 students during 2015-16.