On a day Neel Mukherjee made it to the Man Booker shortlist, his alma mater snapped up an academic from its fabled rival.

The head of the Presidency University economics department, Ambar Nath Ghosh, has resigned and decided to return to Jadavpur University from where he had come nine months ago, triggering speculations on whether the fledgling “centre of excellence” is failing to retain teachers who had once lapped up its tall promises.

Ghosh, the lone professor in the economics department, has cited personal reasons for quitting Presidency, said vice-chancellor Anuradha Lohia.

He could not be contacted as several calls to his mobile phone went unanswered.

Sources at the university said Ghosh had joined Presidency responding to an appeal from a four-member advisory committee that wanted him to head the department.

He was the second JU professor to have joined Presidency University after English department’s Shanta Dutta.

“Professor Sugata Dasgupta of Jawaharlal Nehru University had declined the offer to head the Presidency economics department in June 2013. After head Amitava Chatterjee retired in August 2013, the department was left with no professor. At this juncture, the committee approached Ghosh. His resignation will weaken the economics department,” said a Presidency official.

The teacher crisis in Presidency’s economics department, which has produced a Nobel laureate and several other luminaries, is nothing new.

In June 2013, then VC Malabika Sarkar had to bring in guest professors to make up for an unprecedented faculty crunch.

The university had requested four alumni — Anup Sinha and Amitava Bose of IIM-Calcutta and former ISI teachers Dipankar Dasgupta and Dipankar Coondoo — to take classes.

Sinha, who continues to give “one-off lectures” at Presidency, said losing Ghosh was “disheartening”.

Ghosh’s colleagues at Jadavpur University is viewing his return to the campus as a shot in the arm for them.

“Our macro economics wing suffered following his departure. The department will immensely benefit from his return. In fact, when he had left JU on lien, he had doubts on whether he would find the right environment at Presidency,” said JU economics professor Ajitava Raychaudhuri.

“The UGC had in 2005 accorded our department the status of centre of advance studies, providing for substantial funds for research and purchase of books. Perhaps he was missing such facilities at Presidency.”

Teachers quitting Presidency and joining other institutes is nothing new. Since April 2013, several teachers have left Presidency and joined institutes like IIT-Kharagpur and the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, which offered them better pay packages.

“What makes Ghosh’s departure stand out is the fact that he has joined another state university offering the same pay package,” said a former professor of the Presidency economics department.

“Presidency is the only state university that still gets an annual grant of Rs 7 crore from the government under the faculty research and development programme. Still he preferred JU to Presidency.... It shocks me to learn that the department of Bhabatosh Datta now does not have any professor.”