No right for Bengal govt to appoint or reappoint VCs: Calcutta HC

Kolkata, March 14 In a major setback, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday ruled that the West Bengal government neither has the right to appoint or reappoint Vice Chancellors (VC) in state-run universities.

While observing that the state government has no right on this count, the division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj also ruled for the dismissal of VCs already appointed or reappointed by the state government.

In December 202, the then state Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar had raised objections about the appointment of VCs in 24 state universities,including the University of Calcutta, Jadavpur University and Presidency University.

Also last year, an individual Anupam Bera filed a PIL at the division bench of Chief Justice Srivastava and Justice Bharadwaj in the matter, alleging that the state government gave appointments or re-appointments to VCs of these 24 state universities without following the prescribed norms of the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The entire debate was on the formation of the search committees for appointment of VCs.

As per UGC norms, the search committee has to be constituted with one UGC representative, one from the state university concerned and one nominated by the Governor.

This practice of formation of the search committee was followed in West Bengal also till 2014, when the then state education minister Partha Chatterjee, who is currently in judicial custody due to his alleged involvement in the multi-crore teachers' recruitment, amended the rules regarding constitution of search committee whereby the UGC representative was replaced by a state- government representative.

The VCs appointed by search committees without an UGC representative were challenged in several courts since education being in the concurrent list as per the Indian constitution, if any state act on this subject goes against any central act in the same matter, then the latter will prevail.