MADURAI: Makkal Kalvi Kootiyakkam condemned Governor and Chancellor RN Ravi for adding UGC’s representatives to the vice-chancellor search committees of Madras University, Bharathiar University, and Tamil Nadu Teacher Education University.
In a press statement, coordinators of the organisation R Murali, V Arasu, P Sivakumar, Gana Kurinji, and Uma Maheswari said, “It is surprising that the same governor did not hitherto mention this rule while appointing the vice-chancellors of the university. There is already a representative on behalf of the governor in the V-C selection committee.
By including a representative of UGC, there will now be two members representing the union government. Apart from these, the final decision of choosing the V-C will be taken by the governor. Finally, the union government will be taking a call on selecting the V-Cs of state universities. It will become impossible for the state government to intervene in policy decisions of the universities in future,” they said.
They further recalled that earlier in a case involving the Madurai Kamaraj University, the Supreme Court had ruled that the regulations of the UGC, which had not been approved by the Tamil Nadu Government Legislature, were not valid for the state university.
Meanwhile, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) urged the governor to withdraw the order on the varsities’ search committee , and claimed that is against Tamil Nadu Universities Act. AUT general secretary S Saravanan said adding UGC’s representatives to the V-C search committee would not appear in the University’s rules and statutes.