By IANS
Chandigarh : The Panjab University here will hold a ‘degree mela’ to give away degrees to students, some of whom passed out during the 1950s but forgot to collect these.
The mela, to be held Dec 28, coincides with the university’s diamond jubilee celebrations.
University officials said they have found that over 7,000 degrees of graduates and post-graduates in science, arts and commerce streams and even engineering had not collected their original degrees.
The degrees are of students who passed their final examinations up to 2006. The bulk of these old degrees were not collected after 1990.
Some of the degrees date back to early 1950s, just a few years after the university moved base to east Punjab in India from Lahore City after creation of Pakistan in Aug 1947.
The university, founded in 1882 in Lahore, moved to India after partition in 1947. It initially operated from campuses in Solan (Shimla hills), Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar (in Punjab) and even Delhi before settling in its picturesque campus in Sector 14 of Chandigarh in 1956.
This year, the university is celebrating its diamond jubilee (60 years) of existence in India.
“We want to facilitate these students to take their degrees. They have passed out from here and the university is extending this special gesture,” vice-chancellor R.C. Sobti said.
Old students who have not collected their degrees so far need to bring an identity proof and their detailed marks card (DMC) to get their degrees Friday. All degrees available with the university will be given away at the fair.
Students whose degrees date to the period 2000-2002 will be charged a fee of Rs. 500 by the university while those in the period of 1990-1999 will have to shell out Rs.1,000. No fee will be charged for degrees not collected after 2003.
University toppers from any session, who failed to collect their degrees, will not be charged any levy for obtaining the degree at the fair.
“The degrees are of those students who either failed to collect them at various annual convocations or these came back to the university as undelivered at the address of the student. Most of these students are private candidates. This is a good opportunity for these students to get their degrees,” the university’s director of public relations Sanjiv Tewari told IANS.
However, some university officials seemed amused that the students had moved on with life without even bothering to collect their degrees.
“A degree is an important document – professionally and emotionally. I really cannot comprehend what these students must have submitted in the name of degree when getting employment anywhere,” a deputy registrar pointed out.
Last year, a highly successful student of the university, Chandra Mohan,75, who now heads Pu0njab Tractors, collected his mechanical engineering degree after a gap of 53 years. He had passed the mechanical engineering examination from Punjab Engineering College (PEC) in 1953.
Mohan was a topper of his batch and had not collected his engineering degree all these years. Incidentally, he is now chairman of the board of governors of PEC.
His degree, the paper of which had turned yellow, was found by university officials by chance before the university’s 55th convocation held Feb 2006. The degree was issued from the university’s administrative office in Solan town in Shimla hills (now in Himachal Pradesh) and was dated Dec 1954.