Chandigarh: The Punjab assembly Tuesday passed a law that would remove the governor as chancellor of all 32 state universities — and replace him with the chief minister. The development comes as the latest salvo in the ongoing power struggle between Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Punjab Governor Banwari Lal Purohit.
The Punjab University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023 — which would give the CM the power to appoint university vice-chancellors — will require the governor’s assent for it to become law.
Speaking in the House Tuesday, Mann, whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has 92 MLAs in Punjab’s 117-member house, said that men of high integrity and repute need to be appointed in the universities as vice-chancellors. But Purohit, who isn’t from the state and is unaware of its history and culture, creates unnecessary hurdles, and it’s unfair that such a person is empowered to appoint V-Cs in the state
Citing the row that erupted earlier this month when Purohit asked the Panjab University, Chandigarh, to provide affiliation to colleges in Haryana, Mann claimed that instead of securing the interests of the state, the governor was trying to appease his political masters in Delhi.
This, he said, was blatant disrespect to the verdict of the people that elected the state government.
“The governor has been moving around in the state and he is free to take a ticket from his party and contest elections if he wants to be a part of the government,” he said.
The Shiromani Akali Dal, with its three MLAs, also voted in favour of the bill.
The Punjab Raj Bhavan has yet to issue an official statement on the latest development.
Purohit and Mann have been at loggerheads for several months now. Last week, the governor wrote to Mann asking him to respond to multiple letters that he had written seeking information on various issues, including on the appointment of vice-chancellors for various universities.
In his letter, Purohit told Mann that the Supreme Court had made it clear that the governor was well within his rights to seek information from the state chief minister and that by not doing so, Mann would be failing in fulfilling his constitutional duty.
Mann gave his response through a tweet in which he claimed that it was the governor who failed to do his constitutional duty when he refused to refer to his government as “my government” during his address to the Punjab Assembly on the first day of the budget session in June — an accusation that Purohit has denied.
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‘Governor has no work’
Earlier, during a discussion on a resolution moved by a legislator condemning non-payment of the rural development fund by the Union government, the chief minister lashed out at Purohit for “causing trouble to his government”.
“The central government (BJP-led central government) has, in all the non-BJP-ruled states, appointed a person to trouble the state government. (This person) is called the governor,” said Mann. “If the governor is kept specially for this purpose and doesn’t trouble the chief minister for a few days, he receives a phone call from the Centre and is held accountable,” Mann claimed.
The governor, Mann claimed, had “no work” apart from writing letters to him.
“These are the love letters written to me by the governor,” the chief minister told the House, producing a stack of papers.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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