Lucknow, Sept. 18: Governor T.V. Rajeswar has sacked the vice-chancellors of four universities in Uttar Pradesh after reports confirmed “gross irregularities”.

The vice-chancellors have been “relieved of their responsibilities with effect from September 17, 2005, for various gross irregularities”, said a statement by Raj Bhavan issued here today.

The irregularities pertain to running graduation and post-graduation courses through distance education centres and extorting money from students. The universities allegedly did not seek sanction for running these centres from the Distance Education Council and the degrees being awarded are virtually fake.

The affected universities are the Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University in Jaunpur, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University in Bareilly, Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology in Kanpur and the Sardar Ballabh Bhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology in Meerut.

The commissioners of Varanasi and Bareilly have been asked to take charge of the Purvanchal and Rohilkhand varsities. The governor has authorised the seniormost professors to head the agriculture universities.

Probes carried out by the principal environment secretary, Vinod Malhotra and principal agriculture secretary G.B. Patnaik reportedly reveal that the vice-chancellors have been allegedly granting “unauthorised and illegal franchising” of various centres all over the country distributing degrees, like MSc, MBA, M Tech, LLM and M Phil.