West Bengal VC Appointments| Supreme Court Clarifies That Regular And Not Pro Tem VCs Be Appointed In All State Universities

To recall, on July 8, the Court had constituted Search Selection Committees for Universities. This was under the chairmanship of former Chief Justice of India UU Lalit. The Committees, encompassing five members, were to prepare a panel of three names for each university for VC appointments, alphabetically and not in order of merits.

The Court had also made it clear that it will make the final decision in cases where one party objects to the shortlisted names and the other party does not accept such objections. Three months was given to complete the process.

Now that the committee has been constituted, the Bench of Justices Surya Kant and KV Vishwanathan, in its instant order, has clarified a slew of relevant issues as was sought by the chairperson.

At the outset, the Bench ordered that the additional names suggested by the Chancellor and the State should be forwarded to the Chairperson. The Chairperson will, in turn, shortlist experts for forming these Committees for the West Bengal University of Health Science or other related Universities. However, it was made clear that the Chairperson may include any expert from outside these lists at his discretion.

“As regard to the three Universities, namely, Aliah University, West Bengal University of Health Sciences and West Bengal University of Animal and Fishery Sciences, where the age of retirement of the Vice-Chancellor is 65 years, we endorse the suggestion given by the parties that let the age of retirement of these Vice-chancellors be 65 years, as per the Statutes. For the remaining Universities, the age of retirement of the ViceChancellor shall be 70 years.,” the order added.

Agreeing with the suggestion of Justice UU Lalit, the Court clarified that the experts applying for the position of VC may be excluded from the list of shortlisted experts for nomination on the Committees.

To give a brief background, this order was passed by the Court in a Special Leave Petition filed by the State of West Bengal challenging the June 2023 judgment of the Calcutta High Court upholding the interim vice-chancellor appointments made by Governor Bose in 13 universities, in his capacity as the chancellor of the institutions.

Background of Earlier Proceedings

Efforts to break the deadlock led the court to propose the constitution of a search-cum-selection committee for appointing vice-chancellors. However, the Court faced challenges in forming the committee as neither the governor nor the University Grants Commission (UGC) responded with nominees, as alleged by the state government.

This year, in April, the Court was informed that the Governor has agreed to fill up six vacancies of Vice Chancellors from the list recommended by the West Bengal Government. Besides this, the Court asked the State Government to send recommendations for the remaining vacancies.

Following this, when the matter was listed for hearing, the Court had warned both the parties that it would appoint the VCs if the parties failed to do it amicably. The warning of the Court came after it was informed that out of the names of fifteen candidates (given by the State) for appointment as VCs for fifteen universities, the Chancellor found seven persons to be unsuitable and did not consider the rest.

On May 18, the Court ordered that the remaining eight persons be appointed within one week. It also directed the state government to send about twelve to fifteen names of eminent persons for reconsideration by the chancellor. This direction was passed to fill the seven vacant positions (out of fifteen).

Further, after noticing that both the parties are ad-idem on the constitution of a Search Committee for the purpose of appointing VCs in left-out universities, the Court ordered that the same will be constituted before the next date of hearing, i.e., July 12, 2024.

Case Title: State of West Bengal v. Dr. Sanat Kumar Ghosh & Ors. | Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 17403 of 2023

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