AICTE- Technical University Joint Training Programs for Librarians(ATUJTFL)

Overview

About ATUJTFL

Nothing here is a scholarship. The Council's money goes to one technical university, which spends it running a five day training week for librarians, and the ledger closes at the university's account. A student cannot apply for this, cannot sit in it, and collects no stipend, no fee waiver and no seat, and neither does anyone hoping the Council will help pay for a library science degree.

Two people can act on what follows. One is a technical university weighing up whether to host a week. The other is a librarian already employed in an AICTE approved institution, waiting for that university's circular to reach their principal.

The rulebook is two pages footed July, 2020, and short enough to read before lunch. It fixes a five days' residential training programme with a minimum of 25-30 participants, one such programme per university per financial year, and at least one session of 3 hours given over to moral values, ethics, behavioural sciences and attitude (AICTE scheme document).

AICTE's stated purpose is narrower than the word training suggests. The document asks the week to produce user centered library and information services that support teaching, learning and research, and to bring scholarly information resources into the university through its library. It refreshes people who already run libraries; it qualifies nobody to start.

Whether the Council is taking anything under it is a fair question, and the honest answer comes off AICTE's own file store rather than a notice. On the staff development listing the programme's title is followed by a bracketed qualifier reading scheme on hold in 2022-23, and the row beneath the title offers two documents, a scheme document and an application form, with no apply link and no user manual against either (AICTE staff development schemes). Search the Faculty Development Schemes page AICTE serves today for the word librarian and it returns nothing: what that page carries is ATAL Academy programmes, the Distinguished Professional Scheme, QIP, the Research Promotion Scheme, SAMARTHAN, VAANI and the rest (AICTE faculty development schemes). No withdrawal order has been published either, and the PDFs still resolve, so the position is unannounced rather than closed. The host university is the only body that can say whether it is advertising a week.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no calendar to consult. Both date fields on the myScheme record are empty, AICTE publishes no annual cycle against the line, and the dates that have existed were set by whichever university advertised a week on its own portal. Only a couple of editions are documented publicly.

The 2023 edition is the one that shows what notice a college actually gets. VTU's registrar signed the circular on 20 May 2023 for a programme opening on 12 June, so a principal had about three weeks to identify somebody, get the form countersigned and register them. Watching the host university's circulars page is therefore more useful than watching AICTE's, because the window opens there and closes there.

One earlier programme sits close to this scheme without belonging to it. I.K. Gujral Punjab Technical University ran a five-day national level short term training programme on recent advancement in library profession and services through its Knowledge Resource Center, sponsored by AICTE, reported by the university on 14 February 2020 (IKGPTU). That report predates the July 2020 guidelines by five months and never names this scheme, so it reads as an AICTE sponsored library programme and should not be counted as an edition of this one.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The document contradicts itself about who this is for, in the space between its cover line and its second clause. The cover line reads AICTE-Technical University Joint Training Programs for Librarians in AICTE Approved Technical Institutions Affiliated with the University, which draws the audience from the host's own affiliation list. Clause 2 then opens the door wider than that: all librarians deployed in AICTE approved institutions are eligible to participate, with no affiliation attached (AICTE scheme document). Nothing reconciles the two, so a librarian outside the host's affiliation list is reading a clause the cover line does not support, and only the host's circular for a given edition settles it.

The myScheme record compresses eligibility to the phrase "AICTE approved institutions", which reads as though any approved college could put itself forward to run one (myScheme record). It cannot. Grants under this line go to a technical university, and the intake AICTE publishes is a form addressed to one, asking for the number of AICTE approved technical institutes affiliated with it. That form is worth understanding before it is leaned on: its heading names no scheme at all, only a Faculty Development Programme funded by AICTE, and AICTE hangs the identical file off the teachers' programme in the row immediately above (AICTE application form). It is the nearest thing to a definition of technical university on offer here, and it was not written for librarians.

Hosts have read the participant side generously. Visvesvaraya Technological University set eligibility in its registrar's circular as librarians from AICTE approved technical institutes, then widened it in the accompanying brochure to library professionals from the same (VTU circular and brochure, 2023). Length of service is nowhere in any of it. VTU's registration form asked applicants to write down their years of professional experience and set no floor beneath the answer (VTU registration form, 2022).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

No clause in the scheme document is headed exclusions and the myScheme record leaves the field blank, so the bars have to be read out of the operating rules, where four of them sit.

Two shut a university out. One programme a financial year is the ceiling, which makes a second sanction inside the same year inadmissible however good the case for it. Clause 7 wants a guest house and a dining hall on the premises, because the week is residential, and a campus that cannot feed and sleep its participants fails that test before anything else is assessed. The third bar is arithmetic: honorarium to resource persons has to stay inside 20% of what the programme costs, and the programme coordinator's honorarium inside 1%, so a bill weighted towards the people at the front of the room breaches the terms whatever the total comes to. The fourth falls on the participant, and it is the only one that does. A librarian who does not qualify the test conducted at the end goes home without a certificate (AICTE scheme document).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

A librarian has nothing to renew. One certificate is issued at the end of one week and no continuation is attached to it.

For the university this is an annual cycle rather than a renewable award, and the accounting closes it. Clause 9(vi) makes the return of the grant conditional on three things reaching AICTE within a month of the financial year ending: a yearly report, a detailed statement of expenditure, and a Utilization Certificate in the prescribed format, the whole audited by a certified Chartered Accountant firm (AICTE scheme document). Only after that does the once-per-year allowance come round again.

What you get

Award & benefits

Rs 3 lakh is the ceiling for one programme, or the actual amount spent if that is lower, and AICTE and the host university carry half of it each. Neither side may spend on the other's list. Clause 4 sets three heads of expenditure against AICTE's share and three against the university's, and nothing in it permits a swap.

Read the right hand column from a librarian's chair and the benefit is real but never cash: a bed and meals for the week charged to the host, travel reimbursed for anyone travelling in from outstation, course material, and a certificate the university issues jointly with AICTE. myScheme files the benefit type as cash with direct benefit transfer switched off, which is accurate once you know where the cash lands, and it lands in a university's account.

Sitting in the room has cost nothing in the editions on record. VTU's registrar put the point in a parenthesis inside the circular, telling principals there would be no registration fee for the online programme, and neither of the registration forms the university published carries a fee line (VTU circular and brochure, 2023).

• The maximum total expenditure for conduct of one training program will be ₹ 3,00,000/- (or the actual amount expended) to be shared 50:50 by AICTE and Technical university.
• AICTE: Will release a grant of ₹ 1,50,000/- to Technical university for the training program to meet the expenditure or the actual expenditure, whichever is less on (i) TA/DA/ Honorarium to Resource Persons (Honorarium not to exceed 20% of the total expenditure incurred on conduct of one such training program), (ii) TA to outstation participants and (iii) Course material to participants.- Technical university: Will meet from its own funds, the expenditure to the extent of ₹ 1,50,000/- or the actual expenditure, whichever is less, to cover all items of expenditure such as (i) Boarding & lodging of participants, (ii) Honorarium to Program Coordinator (not to exceed 1% of the total expenditure incurred on one such training program) and (iii) Working expenses (tea/coffee/stationary/certificate/printing etc.).

What to prepare

Documents required

What AICTE publishes under this heading is not an application checklist. Everything on it is filed after the week has finished, and five items are named. The schedule as it actually ran. A roster of resource persons carrying full addresses, contact details and the topic each took. The attendance list. The question paper set at the close, with the mark sheet from it. And, in a document footed 2020, a minimum of five photographs and a video CD of selected sessions. The yearly report, the expenditure statement and the CA audited Utilization Certificate stack on top (AICTE scheme document).

One piece of that is easier demanded than filed. Clause 9(vi) requires the Utilization Certificate in the prescribed format, and no such format is published against this line: the row on AICTE's listing offers a scheme document and an application form and stops, while the teachers' programme in the row above it publishes a Format For Statement of Expenditure alongside its own papers (AICTE staff development schemes). A coordinator drafting a certificate for a librarians' week has to ask the bureau which sheet it wants.

A librarian's own paperwork is thin next to that. VTU's form asked for name, qualification, organisation, years of professional experience, correspondence address, mobile and email, a signed declaration to attend every session, and the signature of the head of institution forwarding the application (VTU registration form, 2022).

Step by step

How to apply

Two applications exist under this scheme and they belong to different people, months apart.

The university goes first, uploading its details to AICTE on a single page form built around institutional capacity: who the coordinating officer or registrar is, how many AICTE approved technical institutes are affiliated, what faculty development programmes the university has run before and how many, whether any of them ran with AICTE, which resource persons it has used, and how many qualified experts sit on its panel. Nothing on it asks for money and nothing on it asks for a librarian's name (AICTE application form).

The librarian applies to the host university and never to AICTE. Clause 10 puts the advertisement jointly on AICTE and the host, with applications invited online on the university web-portal and a link from AICTE's website, so the intake form lives on the host's own site and there is no central window to queue at (AICTE scheme document). VTU worked exactly that way: a numbered registrar's circular went to the principals of all affiliated, constituent and autonomous engineering colleges asking them to depute library professionals, the brochure printed the programme coordinator's landline and mobile, and registration itself ran through a Google form linked in the circular (VTU circular and brochure, 2023).

Tracking splits along the same seam. A librarian's form is visible to the coordinator whose number the circular prints and to the head of institution who countersigned it, and the answer comes back down that chain, since AICTE runs no status page for this line and its row publishes no login to open. A university tracks something else entirely: the grant AICTE sanctions and releases in its favour, closed out by the Utilization Certificate it files after the financial year.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Neither document publishes a scoring rule, so what can be described is who decides what.

AICTE decides the university, and the evidence it asks for is a track record rather than a plan: programmes already organised, any earlier collaboration with the Council, and the bench of experts the university can put in front of a room (AICTE application form). The Council then sanctions and releases the grant as admissible, puts its own representative on the monitoring committee, and keeps the right to arrive unannounced at institutes while a programme is running (AICTE scheme document).

The university decides the room, choosing among the librarians its affiliated colleges depute, and the seat count the document allows, a minimum of 25-30 participants, is what constrains that choice (AICTE scheme document). The last cut is the closing test. The scheme document says only that certificates go to participants who qualify it, but the one edition that published its threshold made the bar concrete: VTU required 80% attendance across the 15 sessions held over the five days and 60% of the maximum 100 marks carried by its formative and summative evaluation (VTU circular and brochure, 2023). That is one host's rule for one week, not a published norm, but it is the only worked example of the test on record.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Before a coordinator drafts a constitution order, it is worth knowing which committee AICTE wants, because the Council's two listing pages link two different files that answer differently.

The staff development listing links the scheme document out of AICTE's faculty development folder, and clause 9(v) there instructs the university to constitute a Project Monitoring committee; myScheme reproduces that wording. The faculty opportunities overview links a file of the same name held at the root of AICTE's file store, also footed July, 2020, also numbered 1 to 10, and word for word identical to the first except in that clause, where the university is told to constitute a Steering committee instead. A third copy, undated and numbered 1.1 to 1.10, agrees with the second (alternate AICTE copy). In all three copies the clause immediately below has AICTE nominating its representative onto a Monitoring Committee. That hangs together only in the folder copy; in the other two a university is told to constitute a Steering committee and AICTE then nominates onto a committee nobody was instructed to form. Ask the bureau which order it will accept.

The rest binds the host and is written broadly. Certification is joint with AICTE and withheld from anyone who fails the closing test. Financially the university is on the hook and AICTE is not: the grant is sanctioned in the university's name, and it answers for every rupee under whatever conditions the Council attaches to a financial grant. Its books stay open to two separate readers, officials of AICTE and the statutory auditors. Its part in the week itself the document sums up in a single word, facilitator. The residential requirement of clause 7 is a real gate rather than a preference. And the closing file, schedule through video CD, is a condition of the sanction and not a courtesy (AICTE scheme document).

Get help

Contact

No scheme-specific email, helpline or officer is published for this line, on AICTE's row or on the myScheme record. The owning office is the Training and Learning Bureau, which AICTE describes as responsible for faculty development and related schemes and whose page lists the bureau's core team (AICTE Training and Learning Bureau). What that page offers is a switchboard and a postal address for the Council as a whole, and no desk on it is attached to this programme.

None of that is where a librarian should write. The address that answers is the programme coordinator the host university names on its own brochure, which at VTU was the university's librarian, reachable on the landline and mobile printed beside the name.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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