Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The future of 300 Ph D researchers appears in darkness as the administration of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University rejected their request to give an extension to submit their final thesis. Signficantly, members of the Management Council in their Tuesday meeting supported the demand of researchers.
It may be noted that there were hundreds of candidates who registered for Ph D research in Bamu before 2015. In June 2024, the university gave them time to submit their final thesis by December 2024. It also gave the last date of research completion by March 31, 2025, as a second extension. However, 300 researchers from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Jalna, Beed and Dharashiv districts could not submit the thesis by March 2025 for reasons like migration to other cities for jobs, some lost jobs in Covid while others are still searching for jobs, health issues, rush at DTP and binding shops for thesis typing and designing and plagiarism check. The univeristy will get lakhs of rupees in fees from them.
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Hope diminishes
A group of research scholars told this newspaper, they had placed great hope in this MC meeting, as their long-standing request for a final extension to submit Ph D theses was expected to be formally considered. “All MC members expressed their approval to give a limited extension, acknowledging the genuine difficulties faced by the scholars. This decision has created serious disappointment among us as we have devoted over a decade to the doctoral work and are at the final stage of submission. Yet, the administration rejected the request,” they said. The researchers appealed to the university administration for a compassionate and pragmatic reconsideration of their case.