President’s office wades into V-C appointments in DU, JNU
The NDA government appeared headed for another round of
bitter confrontation with the academia, this time over the appointment of
vice-chancellors in two of the country’s most prestigious institutions — Delhi
University and the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The development comes in the wake of the resignation of
nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar from the board of governors of IIT Bombay and
the subsequent decision of Raghunath K Shevgaonkar to quit as the director of
IIT Delhi.
Through representations routed through leaders of Opposition
parties, faculty members of the two universities have sought President Pranab
Mukherjee’s intervention into “serious violation of statutory norms” and
“interference” by the human resources development ministry in the selection
process. Responding to one such representation sent by Janata Dal
(United) leader KC Tyagi, the President’s officer on special duty (OSD) Suresh
Yadav informed in a letter dated January 11 that the complaint has been
forwarded to the HRD ministry for “appropriate attention”.
“The NDA government has been systematically working at
destroying academic institutions with aims of imposing a communal agenda,”
Tyagi alleged. Crying foul over the insertion of a fresh pre-qualification
clause requiring applicants to have “at least 10 years experience as
professor”, the teaching staff of the two universities are asserting that this
was “in contravention of the statutes laid down for the two universities by an
act of Parliament”.
Faculty members are also protesting the ministry’s directive
to the universities to place advertisements defining the format of the
selection process.
Identical advertisements for the two posts were published in
a Delhi newspaper on August 5 and August 15. “So far, it had been the search committee’s prerogative to
conceive and follow a particular mode of selection. By setting out a defined
format and inserting pre-conditions violative of the statute of the two
universities, the ministry is attempting to tinker with procedures, possibly in
pursuance of ulterior motives,” one DU professor alleged.
HT sent out a questionnaire to the HRD ministry on the
issue, but no response was received
till late Friday night. In a separate memorandum to the office of the President,
leaders of women’s organisations and “concerned citizens” have also strongly
objected to a particular candidate whose name has featured in the list of names
forwarded by the search panel for the top job in Delhi University. The
particular candidate has been accused in a case of sexual harassment. “A candidate with such a black mark should not have been
considered at all for the top job,” JNU professor Nivedita Menon said.
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