Taking a cue from University Grants Commission, which asked universities to set up a selfie points where students could take their own photographs against the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photo, Odisha government has come up with similar selfie initiative on campuses of institutes of higher education.
The photo of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik would feature in the background.
The Department of Higher Education has directed all principals and nodal officers to set up a selfie point in college premises and those points should be in prominent place. These selfie points would stay at those places till February next year.
The new selfie initiative has been taken up under Integrated Youth Development Programme (IYDP), which has been rebranded as Nua-O under which the flurry of sports tournaments and cultural competitions for students through December and January have been organised on campuses. Funds have been transferred to colleges and universities keeping the students’ strength in mind.
Political observers said the new selfie initiative was absolute needless like the one being dictated by the Centre and the Naveen Patnaik Government wants to generate buzz using State-funding.
The Sports and Youth Affairs department had come up with IYDP (Nua-O) seeking to create awareness towards sports and provide exposure to colleges students to extracurricular activities. Selfie points have already come up in college and university campuses in the State. Colleges and universities have also been asked to involve community and people’s representatives.
On December 1, the UGC had written to all vice-chancellors of universities stating that, “lets celebrate and disseminate the incredible strides made by our country by establishing selfie points within the institutions. The aim of selfie point is to create awareness among the youth about India’s achievement in various fields, particularly the new initiatives under National Education Policy 2020.”
