Tamil Nadu govt must fight for its right to appoint Madras University VC – Times of India

M K Stalin

CHENNAI: DMK president M K Stalin on Wednesday said the AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu should not be silent when it comes to choosing the vice-chancellor for Madras University, unlike it happened during the selection of thee vice-chancellors of Periyar University and Dr Ambedkar Law University.
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“The AIADMK government must fight for the state’s rights and not lose its power to appoint VC for the Madras University,” Stalin said. He also requested the AIADMK government to choose a VC from Tamil Nadu.
“Madras University is part of our history and, therefore, only experts who applied for the post from Tamil Nadu should be chosen as the VC,” Stalin said.
He accused the state government and governor Banwarilal Purohit for lacking transparency in choosing the VC.
He demanded that the government come out with details about the basis on which the 12 persons, who were called for interview, were chosen. He also wanted to know if there were backward class, scheduled class and scheduled tribe candidates.
He said the search committee is eaded by the vice- chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) M Jagadesh Kumar. There were 177 applications in total from various states, including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi.
“There were 30 applications from other states alone and now only 12 were called for an interview. The first problem is appointing Kumar as the head of the search committee as he is a controversial VC and second is how 12 people alone were chosen out of 177,” said Stalin.
Stalin questioned the need for holding an interview through videoconferencing.