CHENNAI, MAY 9
The Tamil Nadu government on Monday tabled a Bill in Assembly that empowers itself to appoint the Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University. Earlier, the state had adopted a Bill for empowering the state government to appoint Vice-Chancellors to 13 universities in Tamil Nadu. With this Bill, the Governor — who is the Chancellor of the universities — will no longer be the one to appoint the Vice-Chancellors (V-Cs).
This is the fourth Bill that the state government has tabled in the current Assembly session concerning the appointment of V-Cs in state-run universities under various departments. Three Bills were earlier tabled for appointment of V-Cs to 13 state-run universities and for the posting of V-C of the Dr Ambedkar Law University under the Law Department.
While tabling the Bill regarding the 13 universities, Chief Minister MK Stalin said, “While it has been the practice that the Governor consults with the democratically elected (government) on appointing V-Cs, that has been changing in recent times, especially the past four years. The Governor has been acting as if he has a special power in appointing V-Cs. This habit of not respecting the government, which has the job of providing higher education, can be seen.”
CM Stalin also said that it was an issue concerning the rights of the state government, of the university educational rights, and of the rights of the government elected by the people, and cited recommendations of the Justice Punchhi commission in the appointment of Vice-Chancellors. The Commission was constituted by the Government of India in 2007 to analyse the Union government-state relations, chaired by Justice Madan Mohan Punchhi, had recommended that “the Governor should not be vested with the rights to appoint V-Cs, which has not been provided by the Constitution,” citing that there would be “clash of functions and powers.”
