Cotton students protest merger move

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Jan 19:  The Cotton College Union Society today staged a dhar against the state governmnet’s move to merge Cotton College with Cotton College State University.

The students’ union is demanding that the century-old college be allowed to function independently instead of being merged with the five-year-old university, which will run both under-graduate and post-graduate courses.

Cotton College Union Society general secretary Jintu Thakuria said that State education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma recently set up a high-powered committee to recommend ways to solve the differences and chart out plans to upgrade the college and the committee has now recommend merger of the college with university which we strongly oppose.

The students union also burnt the copies of the report of the panel submitted to the government.

The union also sent a memorandum to the Chief Minister, State Education minister and Governor opposing the Dispur’s move.

The student body has convened a citizen meet in this regard at Cotton College on January 24.

Earlier general secretary Jintu Thakuria had said that the proposed merger will completely destroy the 116-year-old glorious heritage of this college.

“This one-sided decision taken by the state will affect all existing students, those who aspire to get admitted to this college and the intellectual development of Assam in the long run,” GS Thakuriya had said.

The decision to merge the college on the lines of Calcutta’s Presidency University and Cuttack’s Ravenshaw University faced a backlash in 2011 when the erstwhile Congress government ected a legislation to set up the university to upgrade Cotton College. The backlash saw the Tarun Gogoi-led government table an amendment in the Assembly in 2015, paving the way for Cotton College and the university to function as separate entities.

Established in 1901 by Sir Henry John Stedman Cotton, the then chief commissioner of Assam and founder member of the Indian tiol Congress, Cotton College is considered a centre of excellence in the Northeast.