Education minister Bratya Basu on Monday said his department had decided to move the Supreme Court against the “autocratic” steps being taken by the governor in his capacity as chancellor of state universities.
The minister said this on a day governor C.V. Ananda Bose held a coordination meeting with a section of officiating vice-chancellors who had been appointed allegedly without consulting the state education department. The meeting was held at the Salt Lake office of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology (MAKAUT).
Those present at the meeting included the vice-chancellor of Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
When reporters asked the education minister about the meeting presided over by chancellor Bose, Bratya Basu said: “There is an intervention in the sphere of higher education. In our state, an unprecedented intervention is being carried out by the Raj Bhavan. We are about to approach the court.”
“We can raise our voices. We don’t want to create any stalemate. We don’t want to interfere in the universities. We all know what happened during the tenure of the Left Front government when Santosh Bhattacharya helmed Calcutta University (from 1984 to 1988). Rather we will appeal to the Opposition to stand by an elected government against this intervention. This autocracy must come to an end.”
This is the first time in the past two months that education minister Basu has spoken out against the alleged interventions of the chancellor. On June 1, Basu tweeted that chancellor C.V. Ananda Bose appointed interim vice-chancellors of 11 universities in the state without consulting the government and described the move as “illegal”. In the tweet, the minister had urged the newly appointed VCs to “reject the appointment”.
Since then, Calcutta High Court has validated those appointments.
Chancellor Bose then went on to appoint a retired chief justice of Karnataka High Court and a retired IPS officer from Kerala as officiating VCs of Rabindra Bharati University and Aliah University. Academics have protested the move and questioned the logic behind appointing persons without any knowledge about the state’s university system as VCs.
During this period, governor Bose also removed the two officiating VCs he himself handpicked — one in MAKAUT and the other in North Bengal University — without any notice. “This is going on unchecked. I don’t know what he (the chancellor) is getting out of this. We are going to approach the Supreme Court to find out whether he can keep doing this without consulting an elected government and the education department. We hope to get a clarification from the court,” minister Basu said.
When the minister was told that a VC from Kanpur attended the meeting hosted by the chancellor, Bratya Basu said: “I don’t have anything to say. If a vice-chancellor from Bengal can attend the meeting disregarding advice from the education department, then what prevents a VC from Kanpur from attending the event?”
The education minister spoke about approaching the apex court about a month after Calcutta High Court dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the appointments of officiating VCs in 13 universities by C.V. Ananda Bose.
Chancellor Bose after the meeting at MAKAUT said that all the “pending vacancies” in universities would soon be filled up. The chancellor said this days after a platform of university teachers’ associations alleged the chancellor was not naming his own nominees to committees set up to screen university teachers and that was coming in the way of filling vacant posts.
Governor Bose said: “There will be absolute transparency in the recruitment of teachers. I am saying this because I had the painful experience of having to sign a prosecution order against the former education minister (Partha Chatterjee). Such instances should not repeat in the university recruitment.”