Aurangabad: The election for Board of Studies (BoS) of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (Bamu) held on Tuesday produced a major dilemma before the administration as not a single candidate was declared eligible for a total of eight BoS.While elections were scheduled for a total of 38 BoS, no poll took place for 21 BoS as those who filed nomination were elected unopposed owing to no rival candidate. In all, elections took place for nine BoS whose results were declared by Tuesday evening.Senior BAMU faculty Walmik Sarwade, who supervised the elections proceedings, said that no candidate could qualify to contest elections for eight BoS. “Management Science, Computer Application, Botany, Physical Education and four streams of Engineering are the subjects where BoS have remained vacant. The polls for other nine BoS went off smoothly,” he said.As per Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016, the BoS for each subject is one of the key authority in the university with faculties or heads of institutions supposed to head it.Considered as the primary academic body, the BoS is vested with range of powers. It is supposed to recommend new diplomas and degrees and propose discontinuation of these programmes if found to have become irrelevant.Every BoS has a key role to play in deciding the evaluation schemes of various courses and recommended to the reference books or supplementary reading books and such other material useful for study of the course.Among other key duties, the BoS is expected to prepare panels of paper-setters, examiners and moderators for the university examinations and evaluation, and also understand the requirements of industry or corporate or society at large for designing syllabi.When asked about course of action to be taken to fill the void at eight BoS, Sarwade said necessary guidance would be taken from the state level authorities.“We are meeting the vice-chancellor tomorrow (on Wednesday) to apprise him about the situation. The Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016, apparently, has no provision to deal with the situation faced by us currently. The vice-chancellor after consulting with state level authorities will decide whether any ad-hoc body can be formed as a make-shift arrangement,” he said.Having its jurisdiction over Beed, Jalna, Osmanabad and Aurangabad districts, Bamu has around 418 affiliated colleges. The fact that vacant BoS deal with key subjects has sparked different reactions within the academic circle.A senior faculty from the engineering department said political influence has kept many competent teachers away from BoS elections. “It was purely political fight between groups backed by established political parties. No genuine teacher who has penchant for teaching and research, will prefer to get drawn into political arena,” he said.

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