Education minister Bratya Basu on Saturday accused the Bengal governor, who is also the ex-officio chancellor of state-aided universities, of not cooperating with the state government on the appointment of vice-chancellors despite a directive from the Supreme Court.
Be it on the issue of appointing interim VCs or full-term VCs through a search committee, chancellor C.V. Ananda Bose has not been cooperating with the education department, Basu said.
The minister met Bose recently so that a decision could be taken on appointing interim VCs. But the move has not yielded any result allegedly because of the chancellor.
The minister accused the chancellor of triggering a stalemate on campuses.
“The matter of appointing VCs is now subjudice before the Supreme Court. In such a situation, the chief minister, acting on the directive of the Supreme Court, met the chancellor. Thereafter, we also went to Raj Bhavan and met the governor. The attorney-general was also present. But there has been no progress on the point for which the meeting was held,” the education minister told reporters at the Calcutta Press Club on Saturday.
“We fail to understand how the impasse can be resolved without the intervention of the Supreme Court. Therefore, we called the press conference to raise the issue,” he added.
On December 4, chief minister Mamata Banerjee went to Raj Bhavan to discuss with Bose ways to solve “pending problems” over the appointment of VCs. Her visit came three days after the apex court asked the governor and the chief minister to sit across the table and resolve their differences on the issue.
The education minister met the governor on March 12.
A day after, education secretary Manish Jain went to Raj Bhavan to hold discussions with attorney-general R. Venkatramani.
An official of the higher education department said Basu went with names of university professors who could be appointed interim VCs in consultation with the chancellor.
At present, the universities are helmed by authorised/officiating VCs appointed by the chancellor allegedly without consulting the education department.
The department has since refused to accept the legitimacy of the authorised VCs.
Most of the 31 universities are caught in the middle of the stand-off between the chancellor and the department. This has triggered deadlock on the campuses.
The government, in a special leave petition before the apex court, challenged Bose’s authority to appoint officiating VCs unilaterally.
When minister Basu was asked why his meeting with the chancellor failed to yield any results, he said: “The chancellor has not honoured any of the commitments that he made....The chancellor sought a list (of names) from us and said that he would hold discussions with us.”
“Then he did not hold any discussions with us....” Basu said.
"Your mail is received and is being examined", the chancellor's office said in an emailed response to an email that this newspaper had sent.
Minister Basu said in this situation, the education department could have appointed interim VCs on its own. “But we did not want to do that.... We want to repose our faith in the Supreme Court.”
On February 29, the minister said that the state government would want the Supreme Court to deliver a final order on the appointment of VCs because the delay was triggering “disturbances, intolerance and anarchy” on campuses.
“I still believe the court can end the impasse,” he said on Saturday.
