Demand centrally located campus in Srinagar
Abrar A. Mattoo
SRINAGAR, July 13: The regional office/campus of the Indira Gandhi National Open University in Kashmir is located at Kursoo Raj-Bagh, Srinagar. The location is nearly three kilometers away from the city center and at a place where there is no availability of public transport. Nearly twenty-five thousand students are on a roll at regional center Kashmir, and every time, the journey to campus for a learner is nothing short of a trial.
“They have buried the campus at some remote colony. A learner would have to either get his own transport or walk nearly 3 kilometers from Zero Bridge to reach the campus. It’d be better if they locate the campus to a central location in Srinagar, where it’d be easy to reach for everyone and where there is an availability of public transport,” Qassim Mukhtar, a learner of M.A. English at IGNOU said.
IGNOU’s regional center Srinagar has students enrolled from all the ten districts of Kashmir, including Ladakh and Kargil. Learners often encounter difficulty in locating the campus.
“Whenever I have to go to the IGNOU campus at Srinagar, because of my illness, I have to either get my cousin to drive me or take an auto from Lal-chowk. For me, personally, it would have been better if the location of the campus was somewhere in the center of the city,” Saheem Dhobi, a learner from Handwara said, while talking to Kashmir Despatch.
When Kashmir Despatch contacted Javid Qadir, assistant registrar, regional center Kashmir, he said that the university has already taken note of the problem.
“We have already floated the tender for a space of 7500 Sq. Ft for rent at someplace in the center of the city, but thus far, no one has approached us. We would try to float the tender again in some local newspaper, and hopefully, the issue would be resolved soon,” the official told Kashmir Despatch.
