Ending two days of suspense, the Higher Education Department on Thursday constituted an interim committee to administer the affairs of the premier Anna University until a new Vice Chancellor was appointed.
The committee would be chaired by Commissioner of Technical Education Ramesh Chand Meena.
College of Engineering in Guindy (CEG) campus dean Prof. M Sekar and Alagappa College of Technology campus dean Prof. P Kaliraj would serve as members of the panel.
Earlier, it was rumoured that the constitution of the panel was delayed as the university’s ad-hoc committee (functioning in the absence of the mandatory Syndicate body) recommended the name of former Vice Chancellor P Mannar Jawahar, whose extended term ended on June 26, as a member/convener of the panel.
It was reliably learnt that the appointment of a new V-C could take a few months.“It is most likely that the process of selecting the next Vice Chancellor will be set in motion only after the merger of the five Anna Universities of Technology. The syndicate of the expanded Anna University would have to be formed before the search committee to short-list Vice Chancellor candidates can be constituted,” a senior official said.
The constitution of the interim committee was itself unique and without precedent. Usually if the successor for an outgoing Vice Chancellor is not appointed in time, then a three-member convener’s committee is constituted by the university’s syndicate to administer the affairs of the institution.
In the present case, the university does not have a syndicate at all since an attempt by the previous DMK regime to change the composition of the syndicate has been challenged in the Madras High Court.
Therefore, the members for the interim administration panel were nominated by an an ad-hoc committee functioning in the university.