Bengal Guv Wants ISRO To Help Curb Campus Ragging Through Technology

Kolkata: West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose has initiated a dialogue with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to explore possibilities of the use of high-end technology to prevent the menace of ragging within campuses of state-run universities. The initiative has been mooted in the backdrop of the ragging-related death of a fresher of Kolkata’s iconic Jadavpur University (JU) on August 10.

Raj Bhavan sources said that late Thursday evening the Governor had dialogues with a couple of top officials of ISRO through the use of high- technologies like image matching, remote sensing technology, automatic target recognition and video analysis, among others. Sources further said that the Governor has initiated similar dialogues with other reputed educational institutes of the country on this count.

“On Thursday, the Governor, who by virtue of his chair is also the chancellor of all state- universities, has just initiated the initial dialogues. In due course, further dialogues on this count will happen and at that point of time the vice-chancellors of the different state- universities will also be involved in the discussion process,” said a Raj Bhavan official.

Since the time of the unfortunate incident, he added, the Governor had been constantly initiating on how the ragging- menace could be eradicated completely from the university campuses in the coming days.

“In all his meetings with the vice- chancellors of different state universities, the last of which happened on Thursday only, the Governor had constantly insisted on putting in place all the anti-ragging guidelines set by the University Grants Commission on this count. Preventing ragging through the use of technology is the latest initiative by the Governor on this count,” the Raj Bhavan official said.

Meanwhile, uncertainties continue to prevail over the deadline of installation of CCTV cameras within the JU campus following objections by a section of students.