Don’t support BEd varsity’s move to suspend operations, says Bratya Basu

Education minister Bratya Basu said on Friday the state government did not support the decision of Baba Saheb Ambedkar Education University, a state-aided university that affiliates around 600 private BEd colleges, to suspend operations and would take legal opinion on the matter, if needed.

Basu said this two days after the university put up a notice announcing that normal operations would be suspended “in view of the serious threat as received from some persons connected to the private or self-financed B.Ed and M.Ed Colleges and keeping in mind the security concerns of stakeholders of the University and loss of property belonging to the state”.

“We don’t support suspending normal operations. It is not proper... We did not expect it. If need be, we will take legal opinion on this,” Basu said in his chamber on the Assembly premises.

He said the suspension of operations was unprecedented. “I came to know about this last night. Later, the secretary of the department said the university’s registrar had communicated this through an email. But this cannot be the method. If I cannot run my department properly, I cannot lock the office. In that case, it is better to step down. If you are facing difficulty, you should apprise the department,” he said.

The university was facing protests after it withdrew affiliation to 253 BEd colleges on November 10 and barred them from enrolling students on grounds of not complying with NCTE guidelines.

Police were posted outside the university’s main gate on Ballygunge Circular Road after some college heads threatened to ransack the campus, vice-chancellor Soma Bandyopadhyay said on Thursday.

But Basu’s reaction revealed that the government disapproved of the suspension of operations.

“I don’t know whether they have taken such a decision in consultation with their master, the chancellor…. I held a discussion within the department about this (suspension of operations)”, he said.

Governor C.V. Ananda Bose is the chancellor of state-aided universities. He reappointed Bandyopadhyay as VC in May, allegedly without consulting the government.

Bandyopadhyay said she would not comment on what Basu said.

“We explained what prompted us to take the step. This was communicated to the chief secretary, education secretary and the chancellor’s office. We are looking forward to resumption of normal operations at the earliest after normalisation of the situation with the cooperation of the administration,” she told Metro.