PIL filed against Bengal govt’s ordinance on search committees for appointment of VCs

Calcutta High Court faces PIL challenging West Bengal's ordinance on Vice Chancellor appointments.

Kolkata: A PIL was filed at the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday challenging the West Bengal government’s recent ordinance to make changes in the formation of search committees for the appointments of Vice Chancellors (VC).

The PIL was filed counsel Sushmita Saha Dutta at the division bench of the court’s Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya,

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Dutta has specially challenged the decision to omit the provision of the concerned state university having a representative in the search committee even though the VCs are appointed for the same institution.

She also questioned why three of the five members in the rejigged search committees will be representatives from the state government.

The ordinance issued on May 15 has created a major controversy as in the new system, the state university, for which a VC will be appointed, will not have any representative in the search committee.

As per the ordinance, the five-member search committee will have one representative nominated by the Chief Minister, one by the state Education Department, one by the state Higher Education Council, one by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and one by the Governor, who by virtue of the post, is also the Chancellor of all state universities.

In the earlier system, which was also introduced by the current Trinamool Congress regime, there was a three-member search committee with one representative nominated by the state Education Department, one by the state university concerned and one by the Governor.

During the previous Left Front regime, a three-member search committee had one representative of the UGC, one from the state university concerned and one nominated by the Governor.

That system continued for three years even after Trinamool came to power in West Bengal for the first time in 2011 bringing an end to the 27-year Left Front rule.

However, in 2014 after Partha Chatterjee became the state Education Minister, he introduced the existing system which did not have any place for the UGC-nominated representative.

However, the Vice Chancellors, appointed by search committees without having an UGC representative, faced legal challenges in different courts and the appointments or re-appointments of Vice Chancellors were cancelled by the court.