The Bengal government will not “recognise” the interim vice-chancellors appointed by governor C.V. Ananda Bose without consulting the government, education minister Bratya Basu said on Friday.
“We won’t recognise them as officiating vice-chancellors. The chancellor is appointing interim vice-chancellors without holding any consultation with the department to establish his control over campuses,” the minister told a news conference.
“The Supreme Court has said the governor will appoint VCs in consultation with the state government. But this was not followed while appointing VCs in the state-aided universities.”
By the dint of being governor, Ananda Bose is also chancellor of all state universities.
Minister Basu called the news conference a day after he tweeted about the governor appointing interim vice-chancellors in 10 universities. He called the move “illegal”.
In the tweet, the minister had urged the newly appointed VCs to “reject the appointment”.
When reporters asked the governor to react to the minister’s tweet, he said on the sidelines of a programme at Raj Bhavan: “Consultation does not mean concurrence.”
Minister Basu said later there was no consultation.
“We sent certain names to Raj Bhavan regarding the appointment of VCs. For instance, we recommended some names for the appointment of VCs of Calcutta University and Dakshin Dinajpur University. But Raj Bhavan did not respond. Therefore no consultation was held,” Basu said.
Calcutta University had been without a VC since April 19, the day the extended tenure of Ashish Chatterjee as interim VC came to an end.
The governor has appointed Santa Datta, a professor in the department of home science, as the interim VC of CU.
Datta took over as interim VC on Thursday evening.
She did not respond to repeated calls from The Telegraph on Friday for a reaction to minister Basu’s announcement that the government would not recognise the new interim VCs.
Amitava Dutta, the pro-VC of Jadavpur University who has been authorised by the chancellor to perform the duties of vice-chancellor of JU till further orders, had not taken up the responsibility till late on Friday, an official at the university said.
Calls and text messages to Dutta from this newspaper failed to elicit any response.
Interim VCs are being appointed as selecting a full-term VC through screening by a five-member search committee takes time.
This newspaper reported on Tuesday that the education department had approached the chancellor in the third week of May with the request that the tenure of the 24 VCs whose term was to end by May or early June be extended by six months.
In early March, the chancellor in consultation with the education minister had said these VCs could continue in caretaker capacity for three months.
Hours after the appointment of the new interim VCs on Thursday, an official at Raj Bhavan said the chancellor had extended the tenure of only those VCs who complied with his instruction to send activity reports to the chancellery every week.
“Those who did not comply with the instruction were not considered for the extension,” the source said.
The education minister said he could not “figure out” how sending the weekly report could be a parameter for selecting someone as VC.
