Governor urged to form new team to select BDU Vice-Chancellor

MEMBERS of the Senate and Syndicate of Bharathidasan University (BDU) have urged Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao to remove members of the recently constituted search committee and order a re-election as per the BDU Act and Statutes It was al-leged Senate and Syndicate nominees were not part of the commit-tees, as should be the case under provisions of the BDU Act of 1981. VM Muthu Kumar, the former Vice Chancellor (VC), demitted office on June 12, and the process of constituting a search commit-tee was started even before he stepped down. Senate and Syndicate nominees for the VC search committee were elected through
due process, but a recent Bill passed by the Tamil Nadu gov-ernment left both nominees ineligibleas they did not meet the educational requirements as mentioned in the Ordinance. To elect new search committee nominees, a fresh election was held on July 15. S Sivasubramani-yam, former Vice-Chancellor (VC) of Bharathiar University (13U) in Coimbatore and R Venkatarathinam, retired professor of sociology at Madurai Kamaraj University (MICU) were elected as Senate and Syndicate nominees, respectively. In one of the irregularities mentioned by the BDU Senate and Syndicate members in a let-ter to the Governor, the exofficio Syndicate (Director of Collegiate Education) was allowed to chair Syndicate and Senate meetings,
despite opposition by members. "Making use of the boycott of the election by the members belong-ing to the Association of University Teachers' (ALIT) and Tamil Nadu College Teachers' Association (TNCTA), the ex-officio Syndicate members chaired the meet-ings with the support of ex-officio members," BDU Syndicate and Senate members said. The letter added that many persons have been unlawfully included in the list of voters of Sen-ate members. The Principal (in-charge) of 10 BDU constituent and model colleges was included in the voters' list of Senate members. The Senate and Syndicate members requested the Governor to order afresh election after deletion of ineligible members from the electoral rolls of both the Senate and the Syndicate.