Governor Acharya Devvrat accepts invitation, will be Gujarat Vidyapith’s 12th Chancellor

Devvrat, 63, will be the Chancellor of the university for five years.

Vidyapith’s move to offer chancellorship to Governor Devvrat, who is known for his “passion” in natural farming and cow-rearing, had sparked a row over the definition of a Gandhian.

On October 4, the Council unanimously accepted the resignation of veteran Gandhian Elaben Bhatt as Vidyapith Chancellor and passed a resolution to invite Devvrat to the post. Earlier too, citing ill-health, Elaben had resigned from the post of Chancellor she has been holding since 2015.

On the date of taking over, Devvrat said, “They (Gujarat Vidyapith) want me to join Gandhi’s mission. When they want it is up to them.”

Sources revealed that Vidyapith is likely to announce his official date of joining after the University’s annual convocation secheduled to be held on October 18.
While the Governor is the Chancellor of 20 state universities, Gujarat Vidyapith is a deemed-to-be university under UGC Act 1956.

The University set up by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 has already been into several controversies, the recent one being the appointment of Dr Rajendra Khimani as Vice-Chancellor.

Khimani was appointed registrar in 2004 and stayed in the post till 2019. He was appointed as V-C in June 2021. The UGC, in its 554th meeting presided over by the then chairman professor Dhirendra Pal Singh on November 25, 2021, resolved “to direct the Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith”, Ela Bhatt, to remove Khimani as V-C with immediate effect.

The UGC considered the report of a committee constituted to look into the appointment of Khimani and observed that there were “procedural lapses” in the appointment. The fact-finding committee constituted separately found that “Khimani was also responsible for certain lapses in the administrative and financial functioning of the Gujarat Vidyapith as Registrar”.

Khimani moved a petition before Gujarat HC in March this year and the court on March 22 directed the UGC to not take “coercive steps”.

Khimani urged the court to quash and set aside the decision taken by the UGC on November 25, 2021, directing his removal as V-C and to hold the decision “illegal, arbitrary and in breach of UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations 2019”.

Last month, disposing of the petition by Khimani, the Gujarat High Court directed the university to “pass appropriate orders” within eight weeks based on the report by the UGC that had sought his dismissal as his appointment was not in accordance with regulations.