India’s university par excellence — Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) has been accredited with A++ grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NACC), according to a release issued by the university. This is the highest grade given by the coveted NAAC to an institution or a university based on various set parameters which include: research, infrastructure, learning resources, evaluation, innovation, and governance by following a stringent assessment method. This ranking comes after a NAAC peer team review which was conducted during December 6-8, 2021.
The JMI Vice-Chancellor Prof. Najma Akhtar was elated over this achievement: “This milestone for the university reflects the sheer hard work and untiring effort by all members of the university including the teachers, non-teaching staff, students, and alumni. I personally extend my deep gratitude to all of them and hope that we will not only be maintaining this grading in the future but will also keep on working hard to improve our performance in academic, research and other areas”.
This was the second cycle of assessment by NAAC which bestowed ‘A’ rank to the university in the first cycle in 2015. The university received a score of 3.61 by NAAC in the current cycle, improving it from 3.09 scored in the 2015 assessment cycle. The NAAC gives A++ grade to an institution that gets a 3.51 and higher score.
It may be recalled that the Jamia Millia Islamia had become the epicenter of anti-CAA protests after police barged into the campus without the vice-chancellor’s permission and allegedly brutally attacked students studying inside the library on December 15, 2019. The police had claimed that they entered the campus to look for outsiders involved in violence during the protests, a few meters away from the university. Recalling about that CAA protests period, Akhtar took a moral high ground: “Ups and downs are a part of life. They will come. My students were beaten by police and I was standing with them. I never let their morale go down and their faith in the leadership go down.”
The truth is that Prof. Najma Akhtar, who is a favorite of the Sanghi dispensation tacitly allowed the police to enter the Jamia campus to allegedly brutalise the students, who were quietly studying to bring excellence to their prestigious university. The Jamia students are one of the most intelligent and hard-working students in the country, who always aspire to validate the dreams of Dr. Zakir Hussain and other founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia. The A+++ rank proves that the Jamia students are second to none in bringing academic glory to our great nation. Among the notable alumni of the Jamia Millia Islamia are an erudite scholar and journalist Afroz Alam Sahil, Editor, BeyondHeadlines, well-known journalist and author Barkha Dutt, cricketer Virender Sehwag, martyred photojournalist Danish Siddiqui and others.
As a heritage enthusiast, it gives me great pleasure to disclose that the Jamia Millia Islamia is the only Central university having the full-fledged Faculty of Architecture & Ekistics. The architecture program was started in the Year 2001–2002. This Faculty has the Department of Architecture which offers two-degree courses in Architecture, six masters’ courses, and a Ph.D. too. For the unversed, Ekistics is the science of human settlements. Ekistics involves the descriptive study of all kinds of human settlements and the formulation of general conclusions aimed at achieving harmony between the inhabitants of a settlement and their physical and socio-cultural environments.
Heritage enthusiast and antique arts and rare books collector Ahmed Shareef expressed his joie de vivre on this Jamia milestone. He is quite optimistic that Jamia Millia Islamia will scale new heights of academic excellence. He urged for more resources and funds in the field of research for the bright students of the Jamia.
