The deposed Vice-Chancellor of Panjabrao Krishi Vidyapeeth (PKV), Akola, Raviprakash Dani has said that his removal from the post barely 14 days before his retirement on the issue of citizenship was perplexing since his credentials were never hidden when he was appointed in 2012. “There was a selection panel headed by former SC judge Justice Sirpurkar. It also had the then Additional Secretary of Maharashtra government S K Goel as well as former Director General of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) S Ayappan. Then also my citizenship issue had come up. Then Governor K Shankernarayanan had also asked me about it. I had told him that I was Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) and had also cited examples of some others, who were also appointed to similar positions despite not being Indian citizens. He had then vetted my appointed. So, why has it now been quashed,” Dani told The Indian Express. Dani was appointed as PKV, Akola V-C on August 14, 2012. The present governor's office had said in a release on Saturday that he was being removed from the post after consultation with Law and Judiciary Department and Ministry of External Affairs on Dani's citizenship status. “I had applied for OCI status in 2006 and had got it,” Dani said. He cited examples such as former Rahuri PKV V-C Dattaji Salunkhe and Nanasaheb Pawar as well as former Punjab Agriculture University V-C M S Kang. “Kang wasn’t even OCI,” Dani said. A former senior ICAR official said on condition of anonymity, “Our Prime Minister goes about inviting talented Indians back to India to serve the country. And here his own government in the state is taking this irrational step and that too in a very uncultured fashion. He has been removed with just a few days left for his retirement. It raises a lot of questions about whether things have really changed in India since the new dispensation took over.” Dani had returned to India after serving as Extension Biologist in Texas Tech University, US, for ten years between 2002 and 2012. He had also secured American citizenship there. Prior to his stint there, he had worked with the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), headquartered here, for twenty years. Dani, who has been accused of a few other things like complaints by PKV employees against his style of functioning, a training session for staffers at an institution calked Initiatives of Change at Panchgani near Pune “without permission”, said, “I have a different style of functioning. I think being the V-C because I have worked for ten years in a US university. it is well within my powers to undertake initiatives for betterment of the university. So, I did undertake some missions and have contributed a lot to PKV in the past about five years? Dani, however, agrees that he may have rubbed some “powerful people” the wrong way. “One of them wanted me to vacate my bungalow at Nagpur, which I refused to do. I had also opposed ceding of the PKV land to Akola airport for expansion. I had approached the AAI to have the plan dropped. The AAI then wrote to the state government that the airport wasn’t up for expansion. I had argued that if expansion was necessary, it should be done at Amravati's Belora airport and there was no point in acquiring the fertile 60 hectare PKV land for it. But they finally forcibly took it over and there is no expansion going on,” he said. Dani had also opposed handover of the PKV land at Nagpur to Metro Rail and bus stand projects. “They wanted me to do it at the stroke of a pen and one powerful person said it in so many words. I refused to do it. But they eventually did it and now they are taking more PKV land for a cycling track,” Dani added. Dani cited some of his achievements as setting up of a “prestigious undergraduate institute of biotechnology” at Akola, saving the controversial Sanskrutik Sankul on PKV land at Nagpur from being demolished by arguing the case strongly in Supreme Court, re-recruiting over “90 pc” of the 185 staffers sought to be removed by a court order by conducting fresh process, etc. He also refuted the allegation of signing MoU with Texas Tech University for ”readiness of partnership to freely share technology” without requisite permission. “World over such MoUs are signed by universities within their own jurisdictions. If we become too bureaucratic then how would we make our institutions autonomous, as prescribed by ICAR itself,” he asks. Asked if he is planning to challenge the Chancellor’s decision, Dani said, “I will talk to some former V-Cs and would come up with my further move in a very short time.”
