Calcutta University held a ceremony on Thursday to award PhD degrees after a gap of four years. The university awarded 536 PhD degrees at the ceremony.

The university usually awards PhD certificates at the annual convocation. “The Senate, the university’s highest decision-making body which approves a convocation’s proceedings, does not exist at present. So we had to hold the ceremony,” CU’s officiating vice-chancellor Santa Datta said.

The Trinamool Congress students’ wing staged a protest outside the College Street campus saying degree certificates could not be awarded without the convocation.

Governor C.V. Ananda Bose, the ex-officio chancellor of state universities, attended Thursday’s event.

Registrar Debasis Das said certificates were given to those who were awarded
PhD degrees between December 31, 2022, and December 31, 2023.

“The certificates were awarded to 274 women and 262 men. The increase in the count of female recipients is the hallmark of gender justice practised in the university,” Das said in his address.

The Telegraph reported on September 27 that the tenure of the previous Senate expired in 2022 and the body could not be formed since as the higher education department had yet to send its nominee.

Last November, education minister Bratya Basu had described the officiating
VCs appointed by the chancellor allegedly without consulting the state government as “illegal entrants”.

On Thursday, Datta said: “The PhD degree recipients were worried as the certificates could not be awarded following complications over holding the convocation.”

The Trinamool student supporters staged protests while the VC and the chancellor entered the campus around noon.

“These protesters are the ones who confined me on the campus in August. Bratya Basu in his capacity as the president of West Bengal College and University Professors’ Association (WBCUPA) had supported them,” said Datta.

Calls and text messages to Basu failed to elicit any response.