Call against tainted on V-C panel gets louder

Close on the heels of State Planning Commission Member (Education) E Balagurusamy calling for cleaning up the process of constitution of Vice Chancellor (VC) search committees, another former VC has pressed the alarm bells by writing to the Governor on the consequences of a discredited selection process.

In a letter dated August 4 addressed to Governor-Chancellor K Rosaiah, former Bharathiar University VC S Sivasubramanian has alleged that certain tainted persons were on board the search committees constituted to shortlist VC aspirants for Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) and Bharathiar University, Coimbatore.

The selection process for the Bharathiar University VC is currently on. An inquiry conducted by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption against one search panel member, on charges of corruption in his previous post is still pending, he charged.

The memorandum even names the tainted persons.

Sivasubramanian also questioned the academic credentials of some search committee members. According to him persons who never held the post of Professor were given the task of short-listing VCs. “The net result is that they have chosen a VC (for MKU) who never had any experience as a university Professor or the equivalent cadre as the Principal of a first grade college… (Consequently) There is a complete drift in the activities of MKU compromising all academic matters including quality research and innovation. The entire energy of the present VC is devoted towards building up a film institute which has no scope in Madurai as is the response from the student community,” Sivasubramanian said.

“How His Excellency is going to arrest this drift and sustain the academic and research ambience which was built so assiduously by all of us over the years I really do not know. I am sure, if this trend continues, the MKU is bound to lose its status in several aspects including Potential for Excellence status, PURSE status and may even lose NAAC’s ‘A’ grade,” he said.

Sivasubramanian feared that the selection process for the next VC for Bharathiar University too could be vitiated as a tainted member against whom DVAC inquiry is pending was on the search panel. “I appeal to His Excellence to correct the situation before it is too late. This is the feeling of all true academics, (let us not bother about the pseudo academics) and well wishers of higher education of Tamil Nadu,” the academic concluded.