High time we introspect if governor should be chancellor of state universities: Bengal minister

KOLKATA: West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu on Friday said it was high time to introspect if the governor should be appointed as the chancellor of state universities by default as many eminent scholars were eligible for the post. Basu's remarks came hours after Governor Jagdish Dhankhar expressed his anguish over non-participation of university heads in a meeting convened by him. He claimed that the academicians have given in to intimidation by the state government, with which he had been at loggerheads since assuming charge in Bengal.

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Taking to Twitter, Basu said, "It is high time to introspect whether we should continue with the colonial legacy of the Governor being the Chancellor of Universities just by the virtue of his post or we should nominate eminent scholars and educationists as Chancellors."

Earlier in the day, Basu told reporters on the sidelines of a programme that the government is mulling constitutional and legal options to remove Dhankhar as chancellor of state universities. He also insisted that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should be made interim chancellor for the time being, until someone gets selected to join the post. He accused Dhankhar of “overstepping boundaries to meddle into functioning of higher educational institutions".

Meanwhile, All Bengal University Teachers Association said "any move to appoint a political personality to the post will not be accepted". Similarly, Partha Pratim Roy, the general secretary of Jadavpur University Teachers Association , said, "We may support the proposal of removing the governor from the post. But appointing a political person as the chancellor of universities is a disastrous idea." Dhankhar had initially convened a meeting of private university heads on December 18. He later postponed it to December 23, but the meeting fell through.

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Earlier, too, the governor had called meeting of state varsity vice-chancellors, but none turned up. A livid Dhankhar on Friday took to Twitter to claim that the ruling dispensation allegedly intimidated the heads of the institutions and stopped them from meeting him.