State education minister Bratya Basu on Friday welcomed the Supreme Court’s order restraining the Bengal governor from appointing more officiating vice-chancellors.
He said the apex court “has literally given its seal of approval” on the state government’s “prayer for justice”.
The minister said he was “feeling sad” for the governor, who is chancellor of state-aided universities, because the court took exception to his practice of appointing officiating VCs even after it had intervened in the matter.
Before Friday, the Supreme Court had heard the case on September 27. Governor C.V. Ananda Bose appointed six officiating VCs on October 1.
“We welcome the order. The court has literally given its seal of approval on our prayer for justice,” the education minister told reporters standing in front of the north gate of Raj Bhavan.
“At the same time, I am feeling sad because he is our chancellor and, therefore, if the chancellor is defeated, this is bound to leave us sad,” Basu said.
“But we did not want this. We repeatedly wanted to hold discussion with him so a deserving vice-chancellor, not a puppet vice-chancellor, could be appointed, following the advice of the chief minister in an attempt to ensure the spread of higher education.”
The state government had filed a special leave petition before the Supreme Court on August 5, challenging the chancellor’s authority to appoint officiating VCs unilaterally.
The chancellor had started handpicking officiating VCs allegedly without holding any consultation with the state government in early June.
On September 14, Basu called some of the officiating VCs “slaves” on his X (formerly Twitter) handle.
“We still hope that he will consult us after this order. He will say sorry to the chief minister for not listening to her,” Basu told reporters on Friday.
An official in the education department said that in late February, the education minister had gone to Raj Bhavan with a message from the chief minister and a proposal.
According to the proposal, all interim VCs would resign and the chancellor would extend their tenure by three more months. At the same time, a process to appoint full-term VCs through a search committee would be initiated.
“The trouble started when the chancellor started appointing officiating VCs unilaterally, forcing the state government to approach the court,” the official said.
Calls, an email and a text message from this newspaper to the chancellor failed to elicit a response.
Basu said: “He (the governor) has no moral authority to continue as chancellor after this judgment. We would want him to sign the bill which was passed in the Assembly, making the chief minister the chancellor, instead of the governor.”
He added: “We would want the officiating VCs to resign if they have any self-respect….”