New Delhi: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is learnt to have expressed reservations about a proposal by Visva-Bharati to award its highest accolade, Desikottam, to seven eminent people.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit the university to attend its convocation on May 25.

Emails from this newspaper to the PMO and the human resource development ministry, seeking a formal confirmation of the misgivings, had not been answered till Monday night.

Saugata Chattopadhyay, the registrar, said the university was waiting for confirmation of the proposal. "The confirmation is yet to come from the PMO and the HRD ministry," he told The Telegraph over the phone.

Last month, the academic council of Visva-Bharati had approved the award for actor Amitabh Bachchan, author Amitav Ghosh, lyricist Gulzar, writer Suniti Kumar Pathak, singer Dwijen Mukherjee, scientist Ashok Sen and painter and Trinamul Rajya Sabha member Jogen Chowdhury. The executive council of the university had approved the candidates on May 7.

The university sent the proposal to the HRD ministry for confirmation from Modi, who is the chancellor of Visva-Bharati.

Sources said the PMO had verbally conveyed its "displeasure" at the proposal to the secretary of the department of higher education, R. Subrahmanyam. The sources said the PMO had cited the technical reason that the executive council meeting lacked quorum.

Chattopadhyay, the registrar, said 10,000 students would receive their degrees at the convocation. The last convocation was held in 2013.

University sources said that if the issue was not resolved before Friday, the Desikottam might not be awarded on the day of the convocation.

They blamed the current university administration for the inclusion of "certain political persons" in the awardees' list.

"The university authorities did not take permission from all the eminent personalities before approving them for the award. The executive meeting too lacked quorum. And they included a person connected with a political party, which is against convention," a senior faculty member said.

Asked about the controversy over the Desikottam nominations, the registrar advised this reporter to get in touch with media coordinator Nilanjan Banerjee. But Banerjee's mobile was switched off.

University sources said that following the academic council decision, an executive council meeting had been convened on April 27. But it could not be held because of a lack of quorum. The executive council has, among others, six outsiders as nominated members, of whom two must be present to meet the quorum requirements.

Vice-chancellor Sabuj Koli Sen convened the executive council meeting again on May 7.

This time, the meeting had only one outside member, Shelly Bhattacharya, who presided over the meeting. The consent of Sakha Ram Singh Yadav, an outside member nominated by the rector (state governor), was taken over videophone.

The meeting took three decisions: it reappointed Narendra Modi as chancellor for another three years, nominated the members of the panel that will search for a VC, and approved the list of the Desikottam awardees.

The Union HRD ministry then flagged the lack of quorum and contacted Yadav for confirmation.

Yadav, who was apprised of the PMO's reservations, gave his approval to the decisions on the chancellor (with a rider that two more names be added, from which the President chose Modi) and the search panel.

With the PMO expressing its reservations, the university is now in a quandary.