As a first step, the college will be upgraded to unitary university — which means one college, one university — but there is also a provision in the Bill to upgrade its status in the future further so that colleges can be affiliated to it.

The college has long been demanding for the university status to maintain its merit pool and also fight the stagnation in terms of syllabi, examination forms etc that it has faced under the University of Calcutta.

Following a failed bid for complete autonomy in 2007, the governing body of the college had sent a proposal to the state higher education department on November 3 this year for an upgrade to the university status.

“We wanted a unitary university status, because for a college like ours, which deals with the best in terms of merit, autonomy is not a complete solution. It doesn’t help the proliferation of our students’ talents,” said Sanjib Ghosh, principal of Presidency College, adding the partial autonomy granted to the college for its post-graduate departments has not been of much help for the development of the institution.

Ghosh said inordinate delays in publication of results by the Calcutta University, examinations only at term ends each year according to the university format, no provisions for either summer training programmes or campus placements have driven students away from the college in the recent past. This year itself, the college registered an exodus of 106 students, post-admissions, after they got selected in colleges with flexible semester systems and curriculum.

College authorities say if Presidency College continued functioning under the CU as an affiliate college, its deterioration can’t be helped.

The results too have not been encouraging over the past few years. Fifteen students failed in the BA/BSc Part III (Honours) examination (1+1+1) from various departments this year. In 2008, 10 students had failed to clear the undergraduate examination, while in 2007 the number stood at seven. Moreover, most of the departments didn’t have the number of teachers required for them to function properly. Surveys reveal that 20-25 per cent of the teaching posts are still vacant.

With the dynamics of the higher education changing radically in the country and Yaspal committee recommending the allocation of funds only to universities, it was important to upgrade the institution which counts among its alumni names like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, economist Bimal Jalan, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and former CM Siddhartha Shankar Ray.

The University Grants Commission has specific plans of providing considerable financial aid to colleges which are upgraded to universities. There were also financial reasons behind the demand for the university status. Departments like chemistry, botany and geology have got funds in excess of Rs 50 lakh for a period of five years. However, with the funding agencies saying no to such allocation to colleges in future, the authorities felt that the upgrade was necessary.

Moreover with the new PhD regulations that enabled the University of Calcutta to conduct admission tests for research programmes, the college feared losing autonomy over commissioning research work too.

There are political reasons too behind the move. The Trinamool Congress has been citing the case of the Presidency, where its students’ wing recently gained a foothold, as yet another example of the state government’s high-handedness by not allowing autonomy fearing loss of control on it and its students.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had also tried to explain the government’s stand by saying that the issue was open for a greater debate. “We will deliberate on this issue in the State Assembly,” Bhattacharjee said in an interview to a local channel.

The college has always been a hotbed for political deliberation and activities, with reports of teachers loyal to the CPM getting posted in the college, and others not raising a voice against the process fearing transfers.