Doing our day-to-day business considering our accountability to society: VC KU

Srinagar, Jun 10: The Vice Chancellor (VC) Kashmir University (KU) Prof. Nilofer Khan on Tuesday said that the varsity administration was running day to day affairs keeping in mind its accountability to society.

Addressing media persons at the varsity, VC KU said that “the varsity was dear to everyone and it does not belong to any individual in the university.”

"It belongs to the society of which we are very much aware and we are doing our day-to-day business, keeping in our mind that we are accountable to the society," she said.

The media interaction was organised in following the awarding of fresh A++ grade to the Kashmir University by the NAAC.

"We worked very hard for months together to achieve this grade of A++. It was not easy. The institutions don't come up overnight. They develop over the years pertaining to the development of the university," she said.

She said it need a vision, a mission for the university to grow from B++ to A++ NAAC grade.

"I am thankful to all my teaching fraternity, non-teaching fraternity, students, research scholars, society, bureaucracy, Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor, Education Minister who always were very much concerned about the accreditation of the university," she said.

Prof. Nilofer Khan said there was some delay in fresh NAAC assessment because of their own issues which they had.

"It took some time and at last gave us the dates from May 29 to 31, 2025. Two people came here physically, five people were online. All the teams including the IT and examination department who coordinated all the efforts and gave their best for the honour of the institution," she said.

Prof. Nilofer said she has spent almost 40 years in the university and has seen the varsity growing up in all the years.

"Now it has come to such a stature, we can compete globally with any university, I am very much sure about it and very much confident," she said.

She however said that achieving NAAC A++ should not be the benchmark and they have to move forward, have more vision, and come up to the expectations of the society.

"Be it at the global level or national level, definitely we will work on it and definitely we will see how we come forward. The stature of this university is so high," she said.

She recalled that the varsity had its two satellite campuses in Kargil and Leh which is now Ladakh university.

"We started those campuses and they were our campuses. NIT Srinagar was a regional engineering college of this university; it is a national institute now," she said.

She said the varsity had five lead colleges, which are now constituent colleges of a cluster university.

"So you can imagine the stature of this university, how big it is and what challenges it has faced, I don't need to say. We have come through so many challenges, but in spite of that, we have never compromised on the quality of education. We changed our mode of everything where the best quality would be maintained," she said.

Briefing about the recent NAAC Peer team visit, VC KU said the fresh assessment was completely different from the previous accreditation.

"A robust, very transparent system was in place. We were not allowed to give a flower bouquet to the team members. It was kept so secret. Till the time the NAAC team arrived at the university, we did not know who was coming. So much secrecy was maintained," she said.

VC said the people monitoring the inspection online were unknown to each other. "This was the height of transparency and I am thankful to all my teaching, non-teaching fraternities, students, everyone who cooperated and very rigorously we worked in order to organize ourselves," she said.

She said other VCs have worked equally very hard during their tenure in the varsity but during her tenure, she tried to organize the system and to put in where we have to intervene, be it technology, examination academic calendar, recruitment, "which were our loopholes, tried to plug them up."

"We are in front of you with our head high, that we have come up to the expectations of our society," she said,

Briefing about the recruitments, she said the recruitment was our major achievement in spite of all odds.

"We have been able to do at least 50% of the recruitments in teaching, non-teaching. Some other recruitments are in the pipeline. Our target is to complete it by the end of November this year," she said.