Prof Gurjar’s appointment comes nearly two and a half years after the departure of former PEC director Prof Baldev Setia, whose tenure ended on June 3, 2024, after he was relieved upon attaining the age of 62. Prof Bhola Ram Gurjar, director of the National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR), Chandigarh, has been appointed the first vice-chancellor of Punjab Engineering College (PEC) for six months. Later, the institute was headed by Rajesh Kumar Bhatia as director (ad-interim).
The institute’s leadership structure subsequently underwent a major change with the registration of a new memorandum of association (MoA) on October 9, 2025. The revised framework replaced the earlier director and board of governors model with a vice-chancellor and executive council structure, in line with the University Grants Commission (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2023. The committee of deans and department heads recommended sending the degree-approval proposal to the chancellor to avoid delays affecting undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD students. He holds a PhD in Environmental Risk Analysis from IIT-Delhi and completed postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany. He has also served as a professor in the department of environmental engineering at IIT-Roorkee, where his work has focused on air pollution, environmental risk assessment, urban emissions and sustainability.
The institute’s earlier board of governors ceased to exist after the new MoA came into effect.
