Acting vice-chancellor convenes meeting on Thursday following hunger strike by senate members
It took a hunger strike by a group of senate members to shake the Mumbai University out of its torpor. Finally, on Thursday, the varsity management council will look into some important issues which have long been pending.
Four senate members — Vaibhav Narawade, Dilip Karande, Prashant Ingale and the librarian of Ulhasnagar’s CHM College, Subhash Athavale, whose election to the senate was recently declared null and void by the governor — went on a hunger strike on March 9. They were protesting against the inordinate delay by the various varsity committees in submitting their respective reports. To placate them, acting vice-chancellor Chandra Krishnamurthy gave the assurance that the management council will meet on March 18 to take up some key pending issues.
One of the issues on Thursday’s agenda could be a fact-finding committee’s verdict on whether the varsity scrutiny panel, which inspects applications for the post of the controller of examinations, has done its job properly. Sources said that two conflicting reports had been submitted — one in favour of the scrutiny committee, and the other against it.
The fact-finding committee was set up after several senate members protested against the controller of examination, Vilas Shinde, enrolling for PhD in the university. Incidentally, former vice-chancellor Vijay Khole had said last year, “The position, as it stands today, is as per law.” Khole had said that there was nothing wrong in Shinde enrolling for PhD in the very university where he held the post of the controller of examinations. “Shinde will not be involved in the decision making process on matters related to his PhD work,” the former vice-chancellor had said.
Another report expected to be discussed at the meeting deals with the irregularities at Vidyavardhini’s College of Engineering & Technology. A source said that the report had accused the college principal of harassing both teaching and non-teaching staff. “The principal is pursuing a course (MCA) via the distance education mode, and his staff is teaching him. Further, he does not take any teaching load as per regulations,” the source said.
The members who went on hunger strike wanted that the report on Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute too should be dealt with on Thursday.
However, it has been learnt that it was not ready. They also wanted the university to act on its plan of setting up a sub-centre in Kalyan, but land had not yet been taken up for the project, sources added.
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