Setting the stage for yet another confrontation with the Mamata Banerjee government, West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose on Thursday slammed the state education department for criticising his move to appoint interim vice-chancellors for state universities and alleged that some of the people recommended by the state government were corrupt and had harassment charges against them. “Educational institutions need to be corruption- and violence-free. I am the chancellor of state universities. I want such institutions to be the best in the country and it is very much possible. We have to appoint vice-chancellors to make such universities functional,” Bose said in a video message in Bengali, urging people to extend their support to him in this regard. Defending his move to appoint interim vice-chancellors, Bose said, “Now you would want to know why I could not appoint the vice-chancellors recommended by the state government. But it is a fact that some of them were corrupt, indulged in political games…while some had harassment charges against them. Now tell me my brothers and sisters, should an interim vice-chancellor be corrupt? Will they harass female students?” “The West Bengal education department appointed vice-chancellors to state universities. But the Supreme Court said your action is illegal in capital letters. All the vice-chancellors had to resign. Now, under such circumstances, I as the chancellor of state universities appointed interim vice-chancellors. The West Bengal education department said I was wrong. But the Calcutta High Court said I did the right thing,” Bose said. The governor also claimed that some vice-chancellors had to resign after being intimidated by the state education department. “It is unfortunate that five vice-chancellors had to resign. They personally told me that they had received life threats from goons. They also faced intimidation from the education department and senior IAS officers threatened them. This is what the V-Cs told me in confidence before they resigned. I did not ask anyone to resign. They resigned out of fear,” he said. Referring to the death of the undergraduate student at Jadavpur University, Bose said, “The saddest moment on campus was when an innocent 17-year-old youth lost his precious life due to violent ragging in a great university of Jadavpur. I am taking a pledge today in the name of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda that I will fight for justice till the end. Ten crore people of West Bengal are with me. Those who want a corruption-free campus and education system.. let us join together, fight together and win together for our children and their future.” The sharp reaction from the governor came days after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee slammed him for taking unilateral decisions related to state universities and threatened to block funds for universities and sit on a dharna in front of Raj Bhavan. “We will not allow this to continue. If the governor thinks he is bigger than the chief minister, we will fight back. He should not forget that he is nominated for that post,” Banerjee had said at a Teachers’ Day programme in Kolkata on Monday. “If you interfere with any university or if any university or college takes your order, I will create economic obstructions.Let me see how you pay the salaries of university staff,” Banerjee had said. The chief minister’s remarks came in the wake of a recent circular issued by the Raj Bhavan on Sunday which stated that university officials were not mandated to take direct orders from the state government or execute them without the knowledge and consent of the vice-chancellor. Banerjee also criticised the governor for appointing interim vice-chancellors of state universities. On Sunday, Bose had appointed the interim vice-chancellors of seven universities, including Presidency University, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology and Burdwan University. A day later, Bose also initiated the process of appointing vice-chancellors in seven other state universities. Following Banerjee’s statements, the state education minister has summoned vice-chancellors or registrars of 31 state universities at Bikash Bhavan on Friday to hold a meeting over the ongoing tussle between the Raj Bhavan and the Mamata Banerjee government over the control of the institutions. Defying the state government, on Wednesday midnight, Bose announced the name of Professor Kajal De as the officiating vice-chancellor of the newly established Kanyashree University. While TMC Rajya Sabha MP and party spokesperson Santanu Sen alleged that Bose was “running a parallel administration by bypassing an elected government to please BJP leaders in Delhi”, the BJP came out in support of the governor, saying he was taking decisions in the “interest of the education sector”.
