Indian Express: New Delhi: Wednesday, May 30, 2018.
THE
GOVERNMENT asked President Ram Nath Kovind to overturn his decision on the
appointment of Visva Bharati University Vice-Chancellor (V-C) only after he
ignored HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar’s recommendation for the post and chose
Swapan Kumar Dutta instead, according to official records accessed by The
Indian Express under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
As reported
by The Indian Express on February 23, Kovind, in an unprecedented move,
withdrew his assent to Dutta’s selection as the head of Visva Bharati in
Santiniketan, at the behest of the HRD Ministry. He also scrapped the panel of
three finalists forwarded by the government last year.
While
scrapping a panel for the V-C’s post is not unusual, this was the first time
that Rashtrapati Bhavan received such a proposal from the government after the
President had already approved the appointment of a candidate.
According to
documents accessed by The Indian Express, Javadekar, in a proposal forwarded to
Rashtrapati Bhavan on November 13, 2017, had backed the candidature of Sankar
Kumar Nath for the top job.
Nath is a
teacher of geophysics in the geology department at IIT-Kharagpur. Dutta, an
agricultural scientist who served as acting V-C of Visva Bharati for close to
two years, and P N Mishra of the Institute of Management Studies at Devi Ahilya
Vishwavidyalaya (DAVV) in Indore were the other candidates shortlisted for the
position.
Visva Bharati
V-C: Govt asked President Ram Nath Kovind to withdraw assent after he ignored
its name The Indian Experss report on February 15
On January
25, the ministry received the file with Kovind’s approval for Dutta’s name.
Although the standard practice is to bring out an order notifying the
President’s decision, the HRD Ministry did not do that and, instead, sent
another proposal to Rashtrapati Bhavan after two weeks, asking Kovind to
reconsider his decision, saying that Dutta did not have the “leadership
qualities and attributes suitable to the environment of Visva Bharati”.
The ministry
justified its request on the ground that Datta’s appointment as professor in
Visva Bharati was red-flagged by a fact-finding committee and, also, the
government had recently received complaints accusing him of abetting
irregularities in the selection of the university’s deputy registrar. “Besides,
his term as in-charge V-C has witnessed a number of periodic agitations by the
students and employees’ outfits, which reflect very poorly upon his
administrative capabilities and leadership qualities,” said the ministry’s
proposal of February 7.
“In
particular, the fact that the NIRF ranking of Visva Bharati has fallen from 11
in 2016 to 19th position in 2017 during his tenure goes against him,” it said.
Further,
making a case for scrapping the complete panel of finalists, the ministry
argued that the public response to the selection process was unimpressive and
the government had received only 101 applications for the post. The final
panel, according to the government, did not have names “befitting the status
and requirement of Visva Bharati”.
Visva Bharati
is the only central university which has the Prime Minister as its Chancellor.
The institution was founded by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and its
alumni list includes filmmaker Satyajit Ray and economist Amartya Sen.
It is not
clear why the ministry did not urge the President to scrap the panel earlier if
it felt that the three finalists were not worthy of the job.
Moreover, of
the four arguments made by the government against Dutta’s selection, three
(student agitation, NIRF ranking and the fact-finding committee red-flagging
Dutta’s appointment as professor) were known to the government before it
forwarded the panel to Kovind in November 2017.
On February
16, the President withdrew his assent to Dutta’s appointment and also scrapped
the complete panel. The government then started the selection process afresh.