Governor Arif Mohammed Khan is yet to appoint a Vice Chancellor for Calicut University even a month after the search committee submitted its proposals for the post.
Now, the Confederation of University Teachers’ Organisations of Kerala has urged Mr. Khan to nominate a “meritorious person at the earliest” as the absence of a full-time VC has created “apprehension, uncertainty, and anxiety among various stakeholders.”
In a letter to Mr. Khan, also the Chancellor of the university, K. Gangadharan and M. Junaid Bushiri, president and general secretary of the confederation respectively, said that the VC’s post had been lying vacant for the past nine months. The search panel, involving then Chief Secretary Tom Jose, State Planning Board Vice Chairperson V.K. Ramachandran, and Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice Chancellor M. Jagadesh, had submitted a list of names on May 18.
According to functionaries of the confederation, the process to pick the VC had started around a year ago, months before the then VC, K. Mohammed Basheer, completed his tenure in November last. Though the search panel’s tenure was extended in the wake of its failure to complete the process in time, a list of shortlisted candidates could not be submitted to the Governor. Then, the committee had to be reconstituted, and the entire process repeated afresh. In between came the lockdown, and the interaction with applicants could be held only last month.
University sources said Mr. Jose and Mr. Ramachandran had proposed a list of three names while favouring K.M. Seethi, who was Professor, School of International Relations and Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University, for the post.
The others on the list were C.T. Aravind Kumar, Pro Vice Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi University, and M.K. Jayaraj, Professor, Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology. Mr. Kumar favoured C.A. Jayaprakash, Principal Scientist, Central Tuber Crops Research Institute, Thiruvananthapuram, while also proposing M.V. Narayanan, Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and Suresh Mathew, Professor, School of Chemical Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University.
In between, Mr. Seethi retired from service in the last week of May. It is not clear why the Governor is delaying the nomination though there are reports that some complaints had been filed in his office against some of the chosen candidates. Meanwhile, the search panel’s tenure also got over and Mr. Jose retired. Now, the confederation functionaries pointed out that the present situation cannot be continued for long as Calicut University is among the most important universities in the State.