NOTES 6S ments, the traditional mode of apex-oriented administrative system is under severe strain. Division of administrative responsibilities is, therefore, essential. The high power University Reforms Committee, with a number of DUTA representatives on it, was asked to define a new struc^ ture of the university which would also ensure a more rational system of administration. The Gajendragadkar Committee's Report on University Governance was published and accepted by the Government of India much earlier^ and when the Aligarh Muslim University Act was amended, the said report was implemented almost totally. The Committee had recommended a 'Council for affiliated colleges, which apparently is similar to the autonomous College Board proposed by N^ik. During the last several years the DUTA was persistently asking for effective representation of teachers, students, and the non-teaching staff on all university bodies—academic, executive or administrative. The DUTA, therefore, wanted democratisation of the university bodies to be integrally related with administrative division of responsibilities. It put across the view that structural reform in isolation from reform of the content of education, methods of teaching, or the system of examination would be futile. It, therefore, suggested structural reform to ensure institutional changes from the point of view of teacher-student participation and said that this was the only way of initiating the process of reforming the system of university education as a whole. Needless to add here that the Gajendragadkar Committee's report, or Naik's proposals have a particular political-ideological orientation and therefore, the DUTA's position necessarily has a different kind of socio-ideological preference. The University Reforms Committee's Proposal for a University takeover of all colleges of the University was the first evidence of this distinction. The Committee also recommended a broad participative pattern of college and university administration. It could not, however, come to any decision regarding the exact form of administrative decentralisation, This issue was a more sensitive one, particularly because of the aforesaid context in which the Committee was to examine the issue. Discussions in the Committee were thus inconclusive. Then came on twentysecond June 1972 the Presidential Ordinance, apparently on a formal request from the Vice-Chancellor. The Ordinance introduced three provisions; (a) authorising the University to set up College Councils, (b) authorising the University to declare Medical and Engineering colleges and Faculties of Music and Fine Arts as ^autono-mous colleges', and (c) giving statute making power to the University's Executive Council (Statutes are the highest form of University legislation). The first two are enabling provisions, while the last one is a mandatory one. The Executive Council of the University then farmed statutes to create the college councils, and appointed Chairmen of two colleges councils created by the statutes.