The Calcutta High Court has set aside the West Bengal Education Department’s decision to reappoint 24 Vice-Chancellors of State-aided universities, on the grounds that these appointments were “unsustainable and without the authority of law”.
These appointments were made without the approval of the Governor who is ex-officio Chancellor of the State-aided universities. The appointments were done during the regime of former West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar.
Also read: West Bengal Governor resolves imbroglio in Vice-Chancellor appointments
According to the officials of the State Higher Education Department, the order is not likely to have an impact on the present situation, as the present Governor, C.V. Ananda Bose, had, a few weeks ago, accepted the resignation of the 24 V-Cs and given an extension for a period of three months.
“The appointment of those respondent Vice-Chancellors who are appointed, reappointed, whose tenure extended or who are given additional charge by the order of the State Government or who do not possess minimum eligibility condition or appointed without following the due procedure are held to be unsustainable and without the authority of law. Therefore, they have no right to continue as Vice-Chancellors by virtue of such unsustainable orders,” a Division Bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj said in the judgment on March 14.
The State’s Education Minister, Bratya Basu, said the appointment of Vice-Chancellors at present is with the consent of the Governor.
“We are fully in agreement with the Honourable High Court observations that without the consent of the Governor, the State government cannot appoint Vice-Chancellors. At present, the Vice-Chancellors who are appointed are with the consent of the Governor,” the Minister said. He added that the situation was different in the past when Jagdeep Dhankhar was Governor of the State and it could not be compared with the present situation.
The order came in response to a public interest litigation filed by Anupam Bera in April 2022. In its 46-page judgment, the Division Bench observed, “It would not be in the interest of the students and administration of the universities to continue the concerned respondents as Vice-Chancellors once it is found that they have been appointed without following the due procedure and contrary to the provisions of the Act and that too by an authority not competent to appoint”.
A few weeks ago, Governor Bose after a long meeting with the Education Minister had resolved the imbroglio on the appointments by accepting the resignation of the 24 Vice-Chancellors and then appointing them for a period of three months. Mr. Bose had said that “education must be treated as a no-conflict zone” and the decision was in the spirit of “constructive cooperation”.
The lawyers representing the petitioner who filed the PIL before the High Court said that they may approach the court challenging the three-month extension order of the Governor to the Vice-Chancellors.
Prior to the High Court order, the Supreme Court had set aside the reappointment of Calcutta University Vice-Chancellor Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee as “void in the eyes of law and non-existent”.
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