Calcutta University vice-chancellor Suranjan Das has emerged as the frontrunner to take the top job at Jadavpur University, highlighting the institute's failure to attract scholars of eminence and the government's compulsion to pick someone known to do its bidding.

This is the first time in the history of JU that a candidate for the vice-chancellor's chair holds the same post at CU. Das, who teaches history, is also the first academician with a humanities background to be considered for the vice-chancellor's chair in a institute known for its engineering education.

JU, set up in 1955, has always had a vice-chancellor with an engineering or a science background.

A three-member search committee that includes a nominee each of the state government and the chancellor - Raj Bhavan's pick is effectively the government's choice too - has recommended Das as candidate number one in a shortlist of three.

The list has been forwarded to governor Keshari Nath Tripathi, who is also the chancellor of JU.

Education minister Partha Chatterjee confirmed on Monday that the state government was backing Das to be the next vice-chancellor of JU, lending credence to the speculation that the search committee did what the Mamata Banerjee government wanted.

"Suranjan Das will be completing his second term at CU soon. He can't serve another term there. But we need his service. So we would definitely consider his candidature at JU, although I haven't seen the file," minister Chatterjee said.

The government allegedly imposing its writ on the search committee and rallying behind Das are a departure from what it had promised to do in 2012: depoliticise higher education.

In 2012, the search panel had recommended Souvik Bhattacharyya - then a professor at IIT-Kharagpur - for the vice-chancellor's chair after interviewing 11 academicians, most of them from the IITs, the Indian Statistical Institute and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.

The then search panel, comprising Govardhan Mehta (ex-director, IISc Bangalore), M. Anandakrishnan (ex-VC, Madras University) and Srikumar Bandyopadhyay (ex-chairman, Atomic Energy Commission) had operated independently and resisted the state government's bid to elevate the then interim vice-chancellor Abhijit Chakrabarti to the top job.

A JU official said that of the three search panels between 2012 and 2015, only the first one had been able to act independently and attract a pool of scholars of eminence from across India as candidates for the post.

"Those who had been nominated but didn't make it to the list of 11 were also distinguished academicians. The committee had a tough time limiting the pool to 11, given the outstanding profiles of the candidates. The quality of candidates has dipped since," he said.

The government had first tweaked the composition of the search panel a year after Bhattacharyya's appointment. The UGC representative to the search committee was replaced with a state government nominee.

A search panel comprising a nominee each of the state government, the chancellor and the university was constituted in March 2014. In September, the panel sent a shortlist to the chancellor, naming Chakrabarti as its number one choice for the vice-chancellor's post.

Chakrabarti, who had been officiating as the interim vice-chancellor since Bhattacharyya's resignation in October 2013, ultimately landed the top job in October 2014, beating a professor from IIT-Kharagpur and one from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology in Shibpur as the government lobbied for him.

The panel that has recommended Das was constituted after the government engineered the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014, ensuring that the chancellor's nominee, who gets to head the team, is selected in consultation with the state.

Although the final choice of candidate still rests with the chancellor, the move has almost sealed the deal for academicians endorsed by the government.

Besides Das, the 2015 panel headed by Presidency vice-chancellor Anuradha Lohia (the chancellor's nominee) has included the director of a National Institute of Technology outside Bengal and a scientist from a Calcutta-based research institute in its shortlist.

A source in the higher education department said since Das is officially the number one choice, his appointment only needs chancellor Tripathi's approval. "Das's candidature has been okayed by the government because he has shown himself to be loyal to the ruling party on several occasions," said an official of the higher education department.

In 2013, Das was in the panel of three academicians formed by the higher education department to find a replacement for the then interim vice-chancellor of Presidency University, Malabika Sarkar. In forming that search committee, the government bypassed the mentor group that had been responsible for every decision about Presidency since 2011.

Das proved his loyalty to the government again recently by holding undergraduate examinations on the day of a general strike called by the Left and the BJP. Nearly 80,000 students braved the bandh to write their papers.

Being an autonomous institution, CU enjoys the freedom to postpone an exam without taking the government's permission. Rabindra Bharati and Kalyani University had postponed exams that coincided with the April 30 bandh, only to revoke the decision under pressure.