Bengal govt files petition in SC against Governor's decision to appoint interim V-C for JU

Kolkata, Aug 20 (IANS) West Bengal government has filed a petition in Supreme Court against the decision of the Governor C.V Ananda Bose to appoint new interim Vice-Chancellor for Jadavpur University (JU) which is currently in the midst of controversy over the ragging related death of a fresher.

The Governor’s House has announced the appointment of Buddhadeb Sau, a faculty member with the mathematics department of JU, as the interim vice- chancellor of the university.

The state government has challenged the decision claiming that the decision to appoint Sau as the interim vice- chancellor in JU was done by the Governor’s House without discussing or taking the consent of the State Education Department.

The matter is likely to come up for hearing on Monday at the apex court’s division bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Dipankar Dutta.

Earlier also the Raj Bhavan and the state secretariat had been at loggerheads over the Governor’s decision to appoint interim vice- chancellors for 11 other state universities in West Bengal. The state government has even approached the Calcutta High Court about these appointments.

However, on June 28, the Calcutta High Court had declared the appointment of interim vice-chancellor as valid and also directed the state government to bear the expenses of salaries and other allowances of these newly appointed interim vice-chancellors.

JU has been running without any vice-chancellor for some time since the retirement of its vice-chancellor Suranjan Das. Even one of the two posts of pro-vice-chancellors is also lying vacant.

On Sunday, the dean of students of JU, Subinoy Chakraborty, who was heading the internal probe committee of the university on the unfortunate death of the fresher, also resigned.