AGRA: After the Army rejected an applicant because he had studied in a school affiliated to the board of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), which in their records was still "unauthorised" pending an updated list from the UP government, the administration in Uttar Pradesh is hurrying to fix the error.
Mursalim Khan, 20, a commerce undergraduate student at AMU, had studied at the Saiyyid Hamid Senior Secondary School, affiliated to the AMU Board of Secondary and Senior Secondary Education. At an Army recruitment drive in Ajmer last month, he qualified on all parameters but was not chosen because the board was not among UP’s list of government-approved ones, TOI had reported on August 11. An Army officer who was part of the recruitment rally that Khan participated in had said that the list from which AMU’s board was missing was provided in January this year.
The board had been set up under the Aligarh Muslim University Act, 1920, which gave the university power to “establish and maintain high schools and other institutions” within a “15-mile radius from the university mosque”. The board was recognised by the UGC in 1984.
In a letter to the Army headquarters, asking it to intervene, registrar of the university, Abdul Hamid, said, “The Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad accepted our certificate as equivalent to its UP Board certificates in a gazette notification on July 8, 1995. It can also be found in the extraordinary gazette of the UP government from 1990-93.”
The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) recognises AMU board scores. And it is a part of the Council of Boards for School Education, membership of which is mandatory for all recognised school boards. So how did the problem arise?
“Till March 2014, it was equivalent to the UP board but it got off the list after that for some reason,” a UP secondary education board senior official told TOI. “We are working to fix it.” Principal of Saiyyid Hamid Senior Secondary School Major (Dr) Syed Mohammad Mustafa said the government has asked for its syllabus and other information about the curriculum. “We have sent everything,” he added.
