Vice-chancellor Ravindra Kumar announced the initiative during the 22nd Prof G. Ram Reddy Lecture on Sunday, a release issued by the varsity said. (Representational image)

New Delhi: Giving an opportunity to the transgender community, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) has announced exemption of fees for its transgender students of all programmes. Vice-chancellor Ravindra Kumar announced the initiative during the 22nd Prof G. Ram Reddy Lecture on Sunday, a release issued by the varsity said.

The university holds the lecture on July 2 every year in the memory of the founding vice-chancellor of the university Prof. G. Ram Reddy. It invites eminent educationists and scholars to deliver lecture on higher education, especially in the open and distance learning domain.

JNU V-C M. Jagadesh Kumar, who was the chief guest, urged the teaching community to give precedence to quality of life rather standard of living. Also present was former V-C of Telangana’s Kakatiya University Y. Vaikuntham. He advocated spending 6 per cent of the GDP on education.

“The government should give freedom and spend 6 per cent of the GDP on education. Main thrust should be to devise effective strategies to address the challenges to the growth of education in India and to realise the potential of the country’s demographic dividend as envisaged in the national education policy of 2016,” said Mr Vaikuntham.