Month after Pranab nod, HRD sits on Kakodkar appointment

However, in this case, the HRD Ministry, headed by Prakash Javadekar, was forced to put the formal announcement on hold after “objections were raised by certain quarters in the government about reappointing persons who have already served in nominated positions under the UPA government”.

Kakodkar had been the chairman of IIT-Bombay for three consecutive terms, or almost nine years, when he put in his papers in 2015 after disagreement with Javadekar’s predecessor Smriti Irani, over the choice of an IIT director.

Interestingly, the grounds on which Kakodkar’s appointment has been put on hold did not stop the government from renominating Managing Director of Mahindra and Mahindra group Pawan Goenka as the chairman of IIT-Madras, founder of Infotech Enterprises B V R Mohan Reddy as chairman of IIT-Hyderabad and HCL founding member Ajai Choudhary as head of IIT-Patna’s BoG for a second term. All three served their first terms under the UPA government.

While Goenka was renominated this year, Reddy and Choudhary were reappointed in 2016 when Irani was the HRD minister.

Higher Education Secretary K K Sharma did not respond to The Indian Express’s email seeking reasons for the delay in announcing Kakodkar’s nomination. When asked on Tuesday if he had heard anything from the HRD Ministry, Kakodkar said, “No”. Asked if he had sought an update from the government, the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India and former director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre replied, “Why should I ask?”

As first reported by The Indian Express on July 6, the HRD Ministry, after seeking Kakodkar’s consent informally, had forwarded his name for the post of IIT-Roorkee chairman to the president, in the last week of June.

If the decision is finally announced, it would mark the nuclear scientist’s re-entry into the IIT fraternity two years after he resigned as IIT-Bombay chairman. As first reported by The Indian Express on March 18, 2015, Kakodkar put in his papers after disagreement with Irani over the choice of an IIT director. At that time, Kakodkar, by virtue of being the IIT-Bombay BoG chairman, was also a member of the selection committee constituted to screen candidates for the post of director at IITs in Ropar, Bhubaneshwar and Patna. Irani, as the HRD Minister, headed the selection committee.

Differences between the two surfaced in February 2015, when Irani scrapped the panel of 13 candidates shortlisted for the three posts following disagreement over the choice of director for IIT-Ropar. The minister called for a fresh round of interviews on March 22, and all 37 applicants were invited again.

Upset, Kakodkar quit his post on March 12, 2015, but later agreed to stay for another two months and complete his term on Irani’s request. He, however, distanced himself from the final selection of directors for the three IITs. At that time, both Irani and Kakodkar denied reports of any rift and attributed the resignation to personal reasons.

The scientist first spoke out against the selection process in an interview in May 2015, saying that he resigned because he could not be party to any “wrongdoing”. Criticising the decision to conduct fresh interviews, he said, “The point is you can’t be deciding that choice of IIT director or three IIT directors among 36 in a six- or seven-hour process. If you set aside everything, and then you decide like that, then you are running a lottery.”

In an interview to NDTV in November 2015, Irani, in turn, alleged that Kakodkar had broken the law by interviewing a candidate who had not applied for the post and felt “slighted” when it was pointed out to him.