Since 2014, the Modi government has cracked the whip on several VCs, getting the President’s nod to sack three and conducting inquiries against another three.
New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has already sacked three university vice-chancellors and launched inquiries against five others in its four years in power. Now, it has ordered yet another ‘visitorial inquiry’ — this time, against the VC of Tripura Central University.
The human resource development (HRD) ministry has launched the inquiry into Prof. Anjan Kumar Ghosh, despite the fact that he is set to complete his term and the selection process for his successor is already underway, ThePrint has learnt.
A ‘visitorial inquiry’ is one that is undertaken after approval from the President of India, who is Visitor to several institutes of higher education, including central universities.
The inquiry has been ordered after faculty members and students from the university alleged in mid-2017 that there were irregularities and nepotism in the faculty appointment processes, and malpractices involving procurements of e-books.
The VC has firmly denied these allegations.
“Some faculty members had lodged complaints against me with the HRD ministry. They were unhappy because I refused to bring in experts they preferred to decide on faculty promotions,” Ghosh told ThePrint.
“The allegations are completely false and the university registrar has given a point-by-point response to the ministry on the same. I have not yet been informed of a visitorial inquiry.”
Growing trend
Ever since it came to power in 2014, the Modi government has cracked the whip on university VCs. First, the HRD ministry issued a show cause notice to then Delhi University VC Dinesh Singh, and unsuccessfully pushed to have him removed months before the completion of his term.
Later, the government successfully got presidential approval for sacking Visva-Bharati VC Sushanta Dattagupta, Puducherry University VC Chandra Krishnamurthy and, more recently, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University VC J.L. Kaul.
Inquiries have also been conducted against the VCs of Jamia Milia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University, and Allahabad University.
The HRD ministry also ran into an awkward situation with Rashtrapati Bhavan when it requested the President to ‘reconsider’ his assent to the appointment of Swapan Kumar Datta as the new VC of Visva-Bharati. The President has agreed on Datta according to the ministry’s proposal, but the latter suddenly changed its stance and argued that a better panel of names was needed.