Why always delay in V-C selection process?
| Date :12-Apr-2020 |
By Vikas Vaidya :
In last more than 25 years, nobody has witness the process for selecting Vice-Chancellor (V-C) is conducted as per the Universities Act. During this time even the Act was modified, but delay in appointing Vice-Chancellors continued, for the reasons best known to the authorities. The tenure of any Vice-Chancellor of any university in Maharashtra is five years. The process of appointing new Vice-Chancellor goes through a long procedure. But in last at least more than 30 years Chancellors office has not taken pains to start process six months prior which is written in the Act.
A former Secretary of Education in Chancellor office told ‘The Hitavada’ on condition of anonymity, “Ideally, the process should begin six months prior to the end of tenure of the present Vice-Chancellor. Every record is available at Chancellor Office that should initiate the process. Role of politics might come during the actual selection but in the process politics plays hardly any role except demanding favor of constituting search committee.” Several experts said, practically the outgoing Vice-Chancellor should handover the charge to a person who got selected after going through a proper process and facing the interview of Chancellor.
This doesn’t happen. Another former Secretary narrated an example wherein Chancellor office did try to conduct process well in advance but some hurdles were developed and the idea failed. In a recent example, during the appointment of Vice-Chancellor at Gondwana University, Dr Kirtivardhan Dixit and Dr Murlidhar Chandekar worked as acting Vice-Chancellor for one-and-a-half years. ‘The Hitavada’ had written a story as the maximum period of one-and-a-half years of holding charge of Vice-Chancellor also was crossed.
There was legal issue created and Chancellor office made an appointment of Dr N V Kalyankar on Sunday afternoon as Vice-Chancellor. Except of the tenure of Dr Vilas Sapkal at Rashrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, who had resigned, all other previous Vice-Chancellors had to wait more than 6 months to take charge. Chancellor constitutes a committee of three member including a member nominated by the Chancellor, who shall be the retired Judge of the Supreme Court or retired Chief Justice of a High Court or an eminent scholar of national repute or a recipient of Padma Award in the field of education; Principal Secretary of Higher and Technical Education Department or any officer not below the rank of Principal Secretary to Government nominated by the State Government; the Director or Head of an institute or organisation of national repute established by an Act of Parliament, nominated by the Management Council and the Academic Council, jointly, in the manner specified by the State Government by an order published in the Official Gazette. (b) The member nominated by the Chancellor shall be the Chairman of the committee. This committee scrutinise all the applications and recommends five names of the persons qualified. Out of those five persons Chancellor selects one. On paper the process seems easy, but it takes lot of time while going through the process. The committee has to check each and every application, test the authenticity. Several applicants submits application will several research papers. The committee has to check every minute details. This takes lot of time that is why the experts say Chancellor office should initiate the process six months prior on compulsory basis. In Nagpur too the process began just ten days prior to when the tenure of Dr S P Kane as Vice Chancellor ended.
Demand to extend date of submission of application The interested candidates who want to apply for the post of Vice-Chancellor of Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU) have demanded that the date of submitting applications should be extended. The last date of application submission is April 20. Vishnu Changde, Member of Management Council at RTMNU has sent a letter to Chancellor demanding to extend the date. The reason he has given is of lockdown. Applications are to be sent in the form of hard copy and soft copy both. According to Changde, sending applications in hard copy format is difficult. But according to one expert, date should not be extended. Instead the application should be sent on-line and allowed candidates to submit the hard copy afterwards to save the time of process.