The appointment process for two IIT directors has been cancelled 10 months after a committee headed by education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal held interviews and shortlisted the candidates, suggesting a higher authority is overriding the education ministry in the selection of academic leaders.
“The cancellation of the process to appoint directors to IIT Indore and IIT Mandi after the committee had shortlisted the candidates shows that the selections are done outside the education ministry. This is dangerous for academic institutions,” an IIT professor said.
Commenting on the long delay after the interviews, a former education ministry official had in September told this newspaper that the files of candidates shortlisted for IIT director or central university vice-chancellor are sent, “unofficially”, to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The delays, he said, were mainly a result of the PMO busying itself in examining the candidates’ ideological leanings.
Pokhriyal’s committee had held the interviews on December 26 last year after the vacancies had been advertised in September.
The committee, made up of the chairpersons of the two IITs and other technology experts, had drawn up a panel of two candidates each for the two institutions.
Under the rules, the government has to forward the selection panels’ shortlists to the President — the Visitor of all the IITs — who makes the final choice. This usually takes a week or two.
However, the shortlists for IIT Mandi and IIT Indore were never sent to the President, two government officials said.
After sitting over the shortlists for over 10 months, the education ministry this week cancelled the appointment process and advertised the vacancies again.
“It’s rare for the process to be cancelled after the selection committee has interviewed and shortlisted the candidates,” the IIT professor said. He said the time lag of 10 months was very unusual too.
A former education ministry official too said that the appointment process may sometimes be cancelled if no suitable candidate is found, but such decisions are usually taken shortly after the interviews and not after shortlisting candidates.
In June 2019, the education ministry had cancelled the appointment process for the IIT Kharagpur director eight months after it had begun. However, the selection committee — headed by then HRD minister Prakash Javadekar — had not prepared a panel of shortlisted candidates.
IIT Mandi and IIT Indore have been running without regular directors for months. Since Pradeep Mathur’s tenure ended as IIT Indore director on December 31 last year, the senior-most professor, Neelesh Kumar Jain, has been officiating as director.
IIT Roorkee director Ajay Kumar Chaturvedi was given additional charge as director of IIT Mandi from July 1 after T.A. Gonsalves completed his tenure.
Another three IITs — Patna, Bhubaneswar and Ropar — too have lacked regular directors for several months. The incumbent directors’ tenures have been extended at Bhubaneswar and Ropar while IIT BHU director Pramod Kumar Jain has held additional charge of IIT Patna since Pushpak Bhattacharyya left the institute on June 25.
Another committee headed by Pokhriyal had interviewed candidates for directors of these three IITs on July 14. The appointments are awaited.
Several central universities too have been waiting for regular vice-chancellors.
An expert committee interviewed applicants for the vice-chancellor’s post at Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University, Delhi, on August 20, and another committee did so for the Central Sanskrit University on August 23. No appointment has been made, and the incumbent vice-chancellors have been given tenure extensions.
“The delays in appointments even after the interviews betray government indecision and opacity in the appointment process,” a former HRD ministry official said.
An email sent on Thursday to the education ministry seeking the reasons for the late cancellation of the appointment process for the two IIT directors brought no response.
