Minority community professor loses race for HOD post in VNSGU

Surat: Despite being the senior most, a professor from minority community lost race to become head of the mathematics department at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University (VNSGU) on Tuesday. The university, based on a report of an inquiry committee, decided to select another professor as HOD.
Earlier, a group of senators had made representation to the National Commission for Minorities in September 2018 alleging that Dr M G Timol was not being made HOD despite being the senior most because he belonged to the minority community.

On Tuesday, accepting the report of the inquiry committee, VNSGU syndicate approved appointment of Dr Dilip Joshi as HOD of the mathematics department.

The proposal was tabled first as the meeting started at VNSGU where the syndicate members sought time to read inquiry committee’s report. However, the university authorities refused time and approved the report with majority.

In the report Timol was considered junior to Joshi. The committee stated in the report that since Timol was promoted under the Career Advancement Scheme, he was junior to Joshi who was a directly recruited as professor.

Calling it injustice to the senior most teacher, Rakesh Desai, head of English department, walked out from the meeting.

“A court judgement is wrongly quoted and there are several judgement by the Apex Court in which employee promoted under CAS and appointed under direct recruit are considered at par. There is a GR of government of Gujarat issued in 2009 in which they are considered at par,” claimed Desai, who is representative of heads of the departments in university syndicate.

In October 2018, Desai wrote a letter to VNSGU registrar demanding appointment of Timol as HOD till the inquiry committee submit its report.

Timol, who has teaching in the department since 35 years, was appointed as in-charge HOD after Harish Doctor retired. He did his PhD from Regional Engineering College here and total 20 students have completed PhD while 19 did MPhil under his guidance. He has published 168 research papers.