The constitution of the convener committee of Anna University has come as a surprise to the faculty.
For several weeks, the buzz in the University was that Vice-Chancellor M.K. Surappa would be allowed to continue until the next V-C was appointed.
Until Monday, there was no indication if Governor-Chancellor Banwarilal Purohit would indeed follow the precedent he set in the case of Alagappa and Bharathidasan University.
However, soon after returning from Raj Bhavan, Mr. Surappa convened a virtual syndicate meeting and the committee was constituted. A source said, “It all happened online.”
The three-member convener committee has two bureaucrats, who are also ex-officio members of the syndicate.
The third member is a professor from the University.
University faculty point out that the composition is against the resolution passed by the Syndicate in its 241st meeting held on October 6, 2016.
According to the resolution, which The Hindu has accessed, the committee will comprise the Higher Education Secretary, the ex-officio member of the syndicate who will be the convener; the Commissioner/Director of the Directorate of Technical Education, also a syndicate ex-officio member, and the seniormost professor in the University.
The Higher Education Secretary will be the chairman of the committee. “DoTE Commissioner was chosen as it is a technical University,” an official explained.
University faculty said the same composition for the committee had been followed ever since a V-C began to be appointed.
“During a brief period in 2016, the Higher Education Secretaries and the DoTE Commissioners were being shifted frequently. This was the reason the syndicate passed a resolution providing the designation of the members who will be in the committee,” a University official explained.
Violations
However, the present committee has violated the very resolution the University had approved. In the place of the DoTE commissioner, Hans Raj Verma, the Secretary of the Information Technology Department, has been included.
Also, the seniormost professor, in this case L. Suganthi, professor in the Department of Management Studies, at the College of Engineering, Guindy, was bypassed and Ranjani Parthasarathi, chairperson of Information and Communication Engineering, who is much younger, has been included, sources said.
