Committee to select Jadavpur University VC
KOLKATA: A three-member search committee has been set up to select the new vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University. The present VC of the university is Pradip Narayan Ghosh wose term comes to an end on April 14.
The committee will be chaired by Gobardhan Mehta, former director of Indian Institute of Sciences in Bangalore. The other two members will be M Anandakrishnan, former vice-chancellor of Madras University and present member of board of governors of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and Srikumar Bandopadhyay, chairman of Energy Atomic Commission. Court, the highest administrative decision making body of JU had nominated Bandopadhyay to be a part of the committee.
A search committee was set up to select the new vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University after present V-C Pradip Narayan Ghosh’s term comes to an end on April 14. The search committee will be chaired by Gobardhan Mehta – former director of Indian Institute of Sciences in Bangalore. The other two members are M. Anandakrishnan former V-C of Madras University and present member of board of governors in Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and Srikumar Bandopadhyay the chairman of Energy Atomic Commission. Court – the highest administrative decision making body of JU had nominated Srikumar Bandopadhyay.
As per the amended rules, the state government may allow Pradip Narayan Ghosh to continue in office beyond his term if the new VC is not appointed within April 14. Else, the state government in consultation with chancellor and Governor M K Narayanan, may appoint a new vice-chancellor on ad-hoc basis for a term ranging between six months and a year.
University gazette
The state government on Wednesday issued the gazette notification for the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Act, 2011, setting the ball rolling for universities to form their decision-making bodies, such as the senate and court.
The bodies were dissolved after an ordinance was promulgated in early November 2011. The West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, incorporating the provisions of the ordinance, was passed by the Assembly in the winter session. The act was awaiting gazette notification by the law department before the universities could initiate the process for reconstituting the bodies.
Basab Chowdhury, the registrar of Calcutta University, told Metro the university had received the notification and would soon start the process for forming the bodies.
“We will start the process for constituting the bodies soon, in consultation with the vice-chancellor, Suranjan Das,” he said.
The bodies virtually stopped functioning from mid-July last year, after governor M.K. Narayanan, the chancellor of the state universities, asked the institutions not to take any major policy decision, following the constitution of the expert committee on higher education. The panel drafted the ordinance on the lines of the central universities.
The City Diary
Varsity bill
Governor M.K. Narayanan, the chancellor of state universities, on Monday signed the university ordinance bill, which was passed in the winter session of the Assembly. Raj Bhavan sources said the bill had been sent to the government for issuing gazette notification. Once the notification is issued, the universities would start setting up decision-making bodies such as senate.
Polytechnic admission
Polytechnic colleges under the department of technical education would no longer admit students on the basis of secondary examination results. Technical education minister Rabiranjan Chattopadhyay said students would be admitted on the basis of an entrance test known as JEXPO. The age limit for admission has also been lifted.
Teacher protest
College and University Teachers Association of Bengal, an association of part-time teachers, protested on the fifth floor of Bikash Bhavan on Tuesday, in violation of Section 144, for not getting their salary.
Train services hit
Train services in the Sealdah South section were disrupted for nearly two hours from 9am on Tuesday as some passengers blocked the tracks near Mallickpur station to protest trains running late.
ATM thief held
A person was arrested for theft and misuse of ATM cards. Dinesh Agarwal of Dum Dum had stolen a bag containing Rs 1.7 lakh and a debit card from a businessman in Posta last year. He used the card to buy three mobiles worth Rs 48,000. A few days later, Agarwal stole the bag of a government employee in Alipore and withdrew Rs 17,000 with her ATM card.
Lost & found
A nine-year-old boy with hearing and speech impairment who got lost near Tollygunge on Tuesday was reunited with his parents by police. Since Mohit Das could not tell cops his address, they found out the shop where his school uniform had been stitched with the help of a tag.
Bravehearts
Bharat Sevashram Sangha and industrialist S.K. Birla, with the help of various trusts under him, have proposed to reward 16 youths who rescued patients during the AMRI fire.
Governor counters Mamata on farmer suicides
KOLKATA: Governor M K Narayanan on Sunday broke his silence on farmer suicides in Bengal and linked the deaths to debt. This runs contrary to chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s claims that the suicides were due to personal reasons.
“Many of them, I suppose, were deeply in debt. You have to ask Jairam Ramesh what can be done about this because he is in charge of rural programmes,” the governor said. As many as 26 farmers have committed suicide in the last four months, allegedly because they could not sell their harvest and were deep in debt. “Farmer suicide is an issue engaging the attention of both the Centre and the state government. Such incidents are unfortunate, and a way has to be found to ensure that this does not happen,” the governor said after a programme to mark the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Hours after his statement, the chief minister acknowledged only a “single farmer death” but stuck to her “conspiracy” theory. “People who have run into debt for the past four to five years and end their life are being branded as farmers. This is a conspiracy. People are being told that if a post-mortem will be conducted and a case lodged anyway, why not claim he is a farmer. These are lies,” Mamata said at the inauguration of Subhas Mela at Kankurgachi.
A few days ago, after three back-toback farmer suicides in Burdwan, Mamata had said that the deaths were due to personal problems and not because of falling crop prices and the consequent debt.
On January 19, Mamata had said: “Not a single farmer has died due to falling prices. The deaths of 12 persons were due to personal problems with their personal debts running into crores.” Mamata also tried to draw her defence from the farmer deaths during the Left Front rule, claiming that 378 farmers had committed suicide between 2008 and 2010.
Governor M K Narayanan is also annoyed with the rising number of crib deaths in Bengal’s hospitals, but defended the government on Monday. “There was no belittling of the issue. I know the state government is deeply concerned and the chief minister is personally looking into it. We need to improve the facilities and that is something which cannot be changed overnight,” Narayanan said.
Narayanan has made it clear by now that he is not willing to go down as a “rubber stamp”. He has intervened on crucial issues in his own way, sometimes coming out in the open or at times taking up matter with the respective departments.
On campus violence, for instance, he had written to education minister Bratya Basu seeking a clarification on the government’s plans to curb the violence. As chancellor, the Governor has often put across his views on doing away with dalatantra (political nepotism).
Campus violence: Surjya meets governor
KOLKATA: A Left Front delegation led by leader of the opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra met governor M K Narayanan on Tuesday to discuss the attacks on teachers in several colleges of the state and seek his intervention.
Mishra later told reporters that the governor wasn’t aware of the developments. He expressed concern and promised to look into the matter.
“Students are not being allowed to file nominations for student body elections in colleges, they are also not being allowed to appear for examinations,” alleged Mishra. The memorandum mentioned recent incidents at Raiganj University College and Mazdia College where the principals were allegedly heckled over with student body polls.
While Trinamool Congress supporters are alleged to be involved in the Raiganj incident where the principal was thrashed, SFI activists were accused of harassing the principal at Mazdia College. The Front in its memorandum claimed that while in case of Raiganj, the accused were booked under bailable charges, in Mazdia the students were slapped with non-bailable charges, alleging “double standard by the present government”. Mishra said Narayanan should intervene in the matter as the chancellor of the state universities.
The opposition leader, however, welcomed state education minister Bratya Basu’s attempt to invite all student union bodies across the political divide to work on a unified code for the college elections – cited to be the main reason for the violence in educational institutions state-wide. “This should have been done much earlier. The government has convened all-party meetings on district divisions, name change and others but not this before. We are waiting for the outcome. Students are not being allowed to file nomination papers. We can give specific cases for at least 100 such instances. This should be stopped,” he said.
Basu had earlier said “I have instructed the Higher Education Council to frame a comprehensive guideline on college union elections and its procedures. I am also seeking suggestions from the expert committee on higher education.” Basu had also said, “Students support different ideologies of various political parties and are members of different organizations like Chhatra Parishad, Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad, Students Federation of India (SFI), Democratic Students’ Organization (DSO) and others. But this state is ours and we cannot allow disruption in education institutions. I believe that more than politics, it is important that students realize the political ideologies they believe in. Their identity as students is far more important.”
