‘Meddling’ in picking Karnataka health varsity vice-chancellor leads to rift between government, Governor

BENGALURU: An apparent rift between the Raj Bhavan and the state government over the appointment of vice-chancellors to the state universities has widened. Governor Vajubhai Vala has reportedly sent back the file related to the appointment of VC for Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences.

Interestingly, the file was pending at Raj Bhavan for 10 days. On Tuesday, it came back to the state government and is now lying at the Chief Minister’s office.  According to the official sources in CM’s office, the Governor has rejected the file by asking the state government to reconstitute the search committee and send a fresh panel of names for the post citing a reason that the Principal Secretary to the Medical Education Department was present during the search committee meeting.

Official sources from Raj Bhavan told Express that based on the complaint filed by the Governor’s nominee about Medical Education Department Principal Secretary being present at the meeting and trying to influence the committee members, the Governor rejected the file. “The Governor has taken a legal opinion before sending back the file,” an official source in Raj Bhavan said.

The search committee was headed by Prof B G Mulimani, VC, BLDE University, Vijayapura, with other members being Navin Sheth, VC of Gujrat Technological University as Governor nominee, and M K C Nair, VC of Kerala University of Health Sciences as RGUHS nominee.  The committee met in August 2017 and had shortlisted three names — Dr Sachidanand, current director of state Medical Education Department; Dr Harasoor, retired director of medical education department; and Dr Krishnamurthy, Dean, Mysore Medical college.

After keeping the file for seven months, the state government sent it to the Governor 10 days ago. It is also said that the delay from the government’s side to send the file was because of pressure on the chief minister and medical education minister from Energy Minister D K Shivakumar and  his brother D K Suresh, an MP. “The two brothers wanted to change the names recommended by the search committee and were putting pressure to include the name of the candidate for whom they were favouring. But the medical education minister did not agree to it and told the CM that he would not conduct another round of meeting or change any of the names,” said a highly placed source from the Medical Education Department.

Sharan Prakash Patil, Medical Education Minister, said, “I got to know that the file has come back ... but I am yet to see the same. I will see the file and then react.”  When asked why there was a delay in sending the file and why it was kept for seven months, the minister said, “The CM asked us to do a background verification of the names recommended in the panel and that took time.

Academicians to file PIL

A group of academicians are planning to file a PIL before the High Court questioning the delay in appointment of VCs due to which the post at several universities have remained vacant since a year.  A former syndicate member associated with RGUHS said, “We need to know the reasons behind this delay in appointing VCs.”