AU holds full-dress rehearsal for Nov 8 convocation

PRAYAGRAJ: Allahabad University (AU) held a full-dress rehearsal for its November 8 convocation ceremony in the Senate Hall of the Arts faculty campus on Monday.

Many members of the AU’s Academic Council (AC), executive council (EC) and meritorious students were present.

“We successfully held the full-dress rehearsal at the Senate Hall wherein the proceedings that would be followed during the convocation ceremony were practised,” said AU’s public relation officer (PRO), Jaya Kapoor.

The rehearsal was done following the Covid-19 protocols, as the ceremony will also strictly follow all the laid down norms, she added.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan will be the chief guest of the function in which medals and degrees will be awarded to the meritorious students for the academic session 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Along with this, an honorary degree of DLitt would be conferred on noted lyricist Gulzar. Apart from this, Meghnad Saha and Dronacharya Awards will be presented. It has also been decided that the entire event will also be broadcast live on YouTube.

Earlier, AU had held its convocation ceremony after a gap of 15 years on September 5, 2019. Noble laureate Kailash Satyarthi was the chief guest at that event. It was the first convocation after AU attained central status in 2005.

Before that, AU had last organised a convocation in 2003-04. The convocation was also held in the year 1993-94 during Prof SC Srivastava was the vicechancellor. The university had invited Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav as a chief guest and honoured former President APJ Abdul Kalam and former chief election commissioner TN Sheshan with honorary DSc and LLD degrees, respectively.

For holding this convocation, AU has made all the preparations, and a total of around 304 meritorious students will be awarded different medals, while 550 research scholars will be awarded PhD degrees in the ceremony.

The convocation would award medals and degrees to meritorious students of the session 2018-19 and 2019-20. Of these, 146 students of academic session 2018-19 and 158 students of academic session 2019-20 would be conferred medals.

According to the list of medal winners, out of 146 meritorious students for the academic session 2018-19, 66 are girl students. Likewise, for the 2019-20 academic session, out of 158 meritorious students, 67 are girl students. In total, medals will be awarded to 133 girl students in the function.