Punjab Assembly passes bill to replace governor with CM as chancellor of state universities

CHANDIGARH: Punjab Assembly on Tuesday passed a bill to replace the governor with the chief minister as the chancellor of state-run universities. The Punjab Universities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023 was passed after a brief debate. Apart from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and a lone Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) member supported it.

The AAP government's move comes amid differences between the Bhagwant Mann dispensation and Governor Banwarilal Purohit on several issues in the past, including some selections the state government made for the post of vice-chancellor.

The two-day session of Punjab Assembly began here on Monday. Speaking during a debate on the Bill, Mann said the West Bengal Assembly too passed a similar bill last year. "If we cannot appoint a VC of a university, then it is 'niradhar' (disrespect) of the 'fatwa' (mandate) which people have given us," Mann said in the House.

He claimed that Purohit created impediments in the appointment of some vice chancellors last year. Before this Bill was introduced in the afternoon, Congress members staged a walkout from the Punjab Assembly protesting against no provision for a question hour or Zero Hour in the current session.

The BJP on Monday said the AAP government in the state was holding the two-day special session to further its own agenda and wasting taxpayers' money while announcing to stay away from the proceedings.

According to the Bill, the state government has established and incorporated 13 state universities under the administrative control of the Departments of Higher Education, Technical Education and Industrial Training, Medical Education and Research, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Sports and Youth Services for raising the quality of higher education in the state. The governor of Punjab is the chancellor of all the state universities by virtue of his post, it said. The governor also holds a constitutional post and has to discharge various constitutional functions enshrined under the Constitution of India.

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"The government of India constituted commission on Centre-state relations under the chairmanship of Justice M M Punchhi, has elaborated on this aspect of the position of the governor, relating to the chancellor of universities," as per the statements of objects and reasons of the Bill. "The commission has stated that in order for the governor to be able to discharge his/her constitutional obligations fairly and impartially, he/she should not be burdened with positions and powers which are not envisaged by the Constitution and which may lead the office to controversies or public criticism," it said.

"The commission also observed that the governor should not be assigned functions casually under any statute." It further said, "It is therefore considered necessary and imperative that the constituting Acts of the universities be amended accordingly so as to make the chief minister of Punjab, the chancellor of all state universities for the purposes of the said Acts," it said.

In October last year, Mann accused Purohit of regularly interfering in the functioning of his government, days after he was told to remove the Punjab Agricultural University VC Satbir Singh Gosal, saying he was appointed without following University Grants Commission norms and approval of the chancellor. In a letter to Purohit, the chief minister had said Gosal was appointed as per law.

In the same month, Purohit refused to approve the AAP government's pick for the vice chancellor's post at Faridkot's Baba Farid University of Health Sciences and asked the state government to send a list of three names for the post.