India News | Pro-TMC Academics Ask Bengal Guv to Instruct Officiating VCs Not to Take Administrative Decisions
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. In an open letter to West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose, a pro-Trinamool platform of former vice-chancellors and senior professors have urged him to ask the officiating VCs of 12 state-run universities not to take any key decisions with regard to administrative and academic affairs.
Kolkata, Oct 12 (PTI) In an open letter to West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose, a pro-Trinamool platform of former vice-chancellors and senior professors have urged him to ask the officiating VCs of 12 state-run universities not to take any key decisions with regard to administrative and academic affairs.
Citing the recent observations of the Supreme Court over the appointment of 12 officiating VCs by Bose, who is also the ex-officio chancellor of the state universities, the senior academics belonging to the Educationists Forum said the governor must keep in mind that the appointments are illegal.
The signatories include Om Prakash Mishra, Debnarayan Bandopadhyay, Anuradha Mukhopadhyay, Ranjan Chakrabarti, Ashutosh Ghosh, Nimai Chandra Saha, Dipak Kumar Kar, Mahua Das and Swagata Sen.
"Will you now kindly instruct your illegal appointees not to select, appoint, reward, promote, transfer, remove, suspend or punish any functionary, teacher, officer or employee of the universities at this stage? Will you now kindly instruct your illegal appointees to maintain complete status quo with regard to university administration and to restore status quo ante by reversing all illegal administrative decisions that they may have taken since their illegal and disputed so-called appointments," they said.
"These appointees should not hold any convocation ceremonies at this stage," Mishra, former VC of North Bengal University, said.
The deadlock began after the expiry of the terms of the full-time VCs of 31 state-run universities in April-May when Bose started appointing for these posts even as the state accused him of bypassing the government.
Mishra, the forum spokesperson, said, "These illegal appointees should not spend a single penny from any public fund (be it state fund or university fund) to provide themselves any extra pay, extra allowances, extra perks, extra facilities, etc."
The Supreme Court last Friday had stayed the emoluments of the newly appointed interim vice-chancellors of state-run universities in the state and asked Bose to sit with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee "over a cup of coffee" to resolve the deadlock.
The top court was hearing an appeal of the West Bengal government against the June 28 order of Calcutta High Court which said there was no illegality in the orders issued by the governor appointing interim VCs in some state-run universities.
The apex court also questioned the delay in according assent to the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023 which proposes to replace the governor with the chief minister as the chancellor of all state universities and increase the number of members of the search committee for appointment of VCs.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)