The Devendra Fadnavis government has fast tracked the proposal of the new Maharashtra Universities Act by appointing a committee which would give the final touch of the draft Act taking academic, administrative, financial and legal angles into account.
Scrapping of Maharashtra Universities Act 1994 and bringing in a new Maharashtra Public Universities Act was one of the unfulfilled wishes of the previous regime of Congress-NCP regime which is going to be realised by the new BJP-Shiv Sena regime very soon. The proposed Act does away with the senate model of the state universities to fasten their decision-making process.
The Devendra Fadnavis government has fast tracked the proposal of the new Maharashtra Universities Act by appointing a committee which would give the final touch of the draft Act taking academic, administrative, financial and legal angles into account.
A circular in this regard was issued Tuesday which states that SV Chindhade, a retired law and judiciary official, would be heading a five member committee which would base their work on Nigwekar and Kumud Bansal committee reports submitted to the Congress-NCP government in 2011 while chalking out the new Maharashtra Universities Act for 10 state-run general universities.
The proposed new Act, prepared by a 10-member expert committee under former UGC chairman Arun Nigavekar, comes as a comprehensive rewrite job of the existing Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994 to reform the sector as per the national and global needs and develop an effective student-learner-centric academic structure, strong research, academia and industry linkages.
The state had appointed Nigavekar committee for improvement in governance in higher education which had submitted its report 2011. One of the recommendations of the Nigwekar committees was empowering the vice-chancellor as the sole academic and administrative head of a university. It also recommends that the senate which is mainly en elected body be replaced with a Society Partnership Council which would be nominated by the VC.
Universities, senators and professors had voiced strong opposition to the proposed act on the grounds that it provides unbridled powers to the university vice-chancellors (VCs) and restricts the number of elected members on various statutory bodies of the universities to bare minimum.
NCP leader Rajesh Tope who was the higher and technical education minister in the previous regime was very keen on the new Maharashtra Universities Act, 2014, being passed and implemented before the term of the state government comes to an end. The coalition politics and opposition from the stakeholders put the spanner in tabling the bill in Assembly.
"The senates have turned into political dens and representatives of political parties are elected. Therefore, in the new Universities Act, we have decided to do away with the senate system altogether and replace it with a system of nominations by the vice-chancellor," said an official of the higher and technical education department.
Among other recommendations of the committee was setting up of Maharashtra State Council for Higher Education and Development (MAHED). It has also suggested that MAHED be made a standalone independent statutory body with appropriate and adequate autonomy to help develop higher education, right from funding to appointing vice-chancellors. It has also suggested linking up all colleges of Maharashtra as MS-EDUNET, autonomy to more colleges and more sub-campuses.
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