Most appointed as interim V-Cs don’t fulfill criterion: Educationists’ Forum

Around 400 people, including former state university VCs OM Prakash Mishra, Debnarayan Bandyopadhyay and Dipak Kar, senior professor Abheek Majumdar, and poet Subodh Sarkar, among others participated in the protest before submitting the letter to the Governor’s secretariat. The protesters also submitted a memorandum addressed to the Governor, who is also the chancellor of all state universities.

The forum also wrote an open letter to the Governor and claimed most of the persons “appointed” by him as acting VCs don’t fulfill the criterion of being a professor. “Most of the persons appointed by you do not fulfill the criterion of being a professor with more than 10 years experience in the university system- as stipulated under the UGC Regulations? Why are you violating the UGC Regulations?,” the forum asked in the letter.

“We beg to ask His Excellency, under what provisions of law and statutes you have derived the authority to bestow some chosen under-qualified persons to perform the duties and exercise the powers of vice-chancellor. There is no provision in law allowing the Chancellor to delegate power to persons of choice in this respect,” the forum said.
As per the forum, Article 200 stipulates that the Governor cannot sit indefinitely over the Bills passed by the Assembly and he must act “as soon as possible”.

“As the Governor of the state of West Bengal, you signed the ordinance to constitute the search-cum-selection committees for appointment of regular and full-term VCs and still you refuse to sign the Bill passed by the legislative Assembly on the subject for the past three months. You possibly do not want to operationalise and act upon the legislation. We expect that you do know about the provisions of our constitution. Article 200 stipulates that the Governor cannot sit indefinitely over the Bills passed by the assembly and he must act as soon as possible,” the letter signed by Mishra and several others stated.

In the letter, the forum also accused the Governor of “killing” the university system and its management while “jeopardising the career and prospects” of youths.