In the current academic session, Jhansi’s Bundelkhand College has given admission to 23,000 students, against its sanctioned strength of 6,000.

While Jhansi’s Bundlekhand University, which has granted affiliation to the college, claims that it has no infrastructure to support such a huge strength of students, here is what its principal Manu J Srivastava has to say: “This (inadequate infrastructure) is not a reason to worry. Hardly 2,000 students come to college every day. Most of them are only interested in taking examinations and not in attending classes.”

He said the college thought of giving admission to all students because “it was a matter of their career”.

Senior university officials, however, said the only aim of the college was to mint money. The 17,000 “extra” students, enrolled in BA, BCom and LLB courses, had to pay admission fees. For the BA and BCom courses, it was Rs 1,680 each and for the LLB, it was Rs 2,500.

And the college did have their careers in mind. Officials said the students were assured that “they will get pass marks irrespective of their performance in examinations”.

Bundlekhand University has served a show-cause notice on the college and convened a meeting of senior officials on February 25 for recommending action against the principal.

The incident came to light when the college forwarded examination admit cards of its students to the university for approval.

“We were taken by surprise when we found that 23,000 admit cards were from this college alone. During preliminary investigations, we found the college had managed to get more admission forms from the university than its quota,” said a senior official.

Vice-Chancellor Prof O P Kandari said: “We will definitely inquire how university officials overlooked the norms while sanctioning admission forms to the college.”

“It is surprising and shocking. The college has admitted students three times its sanctioned quota,” said Registrar Prabash Dwivedi. “It has no infrastructure to teach so many.”

Principal Secretary, Higher Education, A K Srivastava said: “The case will be probed extensively.”