Calcutta University will hold a ceremony to award PhD degrees after a gap of four years.
The university usually awards PhD certificates at the annual convocation. However, the university’s highest decision-making body, the Senate, which approves a convocation’s proceedings, does not exist at present.
The tenure of the previous senate expired in 2022 and the body could not be formed as the higher education department has yet to send its nominee, said a university official.
The department in a recent advisory has also asked state-aided universities not to hold convocations because the campuses are being helmed by officiating vice-chancellors who have been appointed by the governor allegedly without consulting the government.
CU’s officiating VC, Santa Datta, who was appointed last year said that as the award of PhD degrees has remained stalled, the recipients are encountering hassles that are coming in their way of pursuing higher studies.
Considering their plight the university has decided to hold the PhD degree awarding ceremony, she said.
Governor C.V. Ananda Bose, the ex-officio chancellor of state-aided universities, has been invited by the university to award the degrees.
“The students are suffering as the certificates could not be awarded. Provisional certificates are not always recognised. Therefore we have decided to organise the PhD degree award ceremony. Medals will be distributed the same day,” VC Datta told The Telegraph.
The university last held its convocation on January 27, 2000, at Nazrul Mancha months before the onset of the pandemic.
That day, Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was awarded an honorary DLitt and the Sudhindra Chandra Chakraborty Memorial Medal was conferred on four distinguished academics.
While the convocation could not be held in 2021 and 2022 because of the pandemic, the ceremony could not be organised last year as the Senate was non-existent.
“The convocation cannot be held now because the Senate has not been reconstituted,” said VC Datta.
Registrar Debasish Das said: “The Senate could not be reconstituted as the university has yet to get the names of the state government’s nominees and those of the elected teachers’ body.”
A university official said it was unlikely that the department would send its nominee to the senate, given the friction between VC and the department.
“In recent times, whenever the university has decided to hold a meeting of its syndicate, the department has written to the registrar saying that as the university does not have a regular VC, holding the meeting of the syndicate will violate the rules set in 2019. So the department has not been sending its nominee to the senate,” the official said.
On April 1, the education department had asked state-aided universities not to convene meetings of their decision-making bodies or hold convocations “without the approval of the state.”
The department’s April 1 notice said: “Since the universities are under an interim arrangement, any action of the universities should strictly abide by the extant Act and rules.....
“The universities are holding meetings of the Court/Senate/Governing board and Syndicate/Executive Council and other bodies of the universities as well as convocations without the approval of the state government in violation of Rule 3(5) of the West Bengal State Universities (Terms and Conditions of Service of Vice-Chancellors and Manner and Procedure of Official Communication) Rules, 2019.”
A process to appoint full-term VCs through a search committee under the watch of the Supreme Court is underway.
