Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is helping inmates lodged in various jails in Haryana making them complete their graduation in various disciplines. Under trials and other prisoners are being provided books and other study material by the university to pursue BA, BCom and other degrees. As many as 2777 under trials and other prisoners were enrolled in different courses during a span of five years from 2017 to 2022. In bid to provide free education to maximum inmates, the IGNOU Centres have set up in 13 jails including Central Jail, Ambala, District Jail Sirsa, Karnal, Gurgaon and Faridabad and many more of Haryana. The sole aim of this initiative is to enable the prison inmates to study and acquire higher qualifications after 10+2 so as to provide them better employment opportunities after the release from the Jails.
Among the inmates studying through IGNOU, there are a maximum of 937 prisoners in Jind jail to be followed by 354 inmates in Sonipat jail. Thus, the number of studying inmates in Hisar and Sonipat jails constitutes around 50 of the total enrolled prisoners. Apart from this, there are 185, 174, 170, 129, and 100 inmates enrolled in Kurukshetra, Yamunanagar, Karnal, Sirsa and Rohtak respectively. While remaining studying inmates are lodged in Jhajjar, Kaithal and Narnaul jails.
The officials of IGNOU in collaboration with the police department are putting their best to ensure the maximum enrollment of the inmates for study under this study. Government Literacy mission programmes are running in 13 jails and the number of the inmates seeking enrollment continues to rise Thus, the jail inmates may be confined within four walls but a lot of them use this time to pursue their studies.
IGNOU aimed at the learning needs of the illiterate and semi illiterate prisoners in the state the efforts made so far by the regional study Centre of IGNOU at Karnal have proved fruitful and overwhelming to some extent. Inmates lodged in Prisons are exempted from payment of programme fee, including registration fee.
The under-trial/short term prisoners are also eligible for the same benefit of FREESHIP as is extended to other prisoners with the condition that when they go out of jail, they will be treated as normal students and shall pay subsequent fees wherever applicable (e.g. examination fee, re-registration fee, pro-rata fee for readmission,
registration fee for convocation etc.).
IGNOU is like a boon for such people who could not complete their education due to the crimes they had committed and lodged in jails. Education is a catalyst which is most likely to help them join the mainstream of society after they complete their sentence. it is encouraging for us when we
see prisoners coming forward to study our courses.