Bengal House passes bill to amend law on appointment of V-Cs

The West Bengal legislative assembly on Friday passed a bill that proposes to amend laws pertaining to appointment of vice-chancellors of state-run universities, even as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged the legislation would give complete control to the state government over the education system.

The West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill 2023 was tabled and passed by voice vote, with 120 legislators extending its support and 51 opposing it.

The bill prescribes the formation of a five-member search committee in which the governor, the University Grants Commission (UGC), chief minister, state government and the West Bengal State Council of Higher Education will have one representative each.

The representative of the governor, who is the chancellor of all state-run universities, will be the chairperson of the search committee, according to the bill.

The old rules under separate laws governing each of the 31 state-run universities permitted search committees to include representatives of the universities. Besides, the guidelines excluded UGC from the appointment process following an amendment in appointment rules passed by the government in 2014.

During a two-hour discussion on the bill, state education minister Bratya Basu said the legislation was drafted to follow the regulations passed by UGC, in 2018, which made inclusion of a UGC representative in the search committee mandatory.

“The state government is following the UGC rules,” Basu said.

The BJP demanded that the bill be sent to a select committee for scrutiny but speaker Biman Banerjee did not allow it.

“Since three of the five members of the new search committee will represent the state, the government will easily get its decisions passed,” Leader of Opposition in the assembly Suvendu Adhikari said.

“We will request the governor not to give his assent to the bill. Without his clearance, the bill cannot be made into a law,” Adhikari, who met Bose in the afternoon, said.

Basu dismissed the Opposition’s claims. “Arguments put up by the Opposition party are baseless,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from the Raj Bhavan till Friday evening.

There are 31 state-run universities in Bengal.

The functioning of state-run universities has always been a bone of contention between the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-led government and Raj Bhavan since 2019, when former governor Jagdeep Dhankhar took charge as governor.