The University of Calcutta held its syndicate meeting on Tuesday after speculations that it might be postponed or cancelled. The West Bengal education department had denied permission to University of Calcutta to conduct a crucial examination-related meeting of the university’s syndicate, scheduled for Tuesday.
The meeting was crucial in the sense that some decisions were supposed to be taken there over the introduction of a “new examination system” in light of the new education policy nationally for the 169 colleges under the jurisdiction of the university.
Varsity insiders said that a last moment communiqué reached the authorities on Monday evening from the state education department denying permission for conducting the meeting of the syndicate. Deputy registrar Prof Debases Das said, “We needed to have the meeting for the implementation of the NEP. Also, we needed to issue degrees to students, who passed out in 2022, which had been pending.
We also discussed the promotion of the non-teaching staff. The meeting was important from the point of view that we would have faced exam-related issues later.” The students protested against the meeting, which was in defiance to the state government’s diktat. They even tried to submit a deputation to the VC, which was not accepted. Abdul Kayuam Molla, state general secretary, TMCP, said, “This is in defiance of the government’s communication. The syndicate has to take permission from the government for any meeting.
So, we protested today as the varsity is working against the state government. The government is trying to get the issue resolved fast and the chancellor should solve this at the earliest. We are hopeful the Governor will sit with the government.”
The state education department had objected to the meeting on the basis that the University of Calcutta does not have any permanent vice-chancellor and such meetings cannot be convened by any interim vicechancellor. Currently, the daily affairs of the University of Calcutta are being managed by the current interim vice-chancellor Shanta Dutta, who was appointed by the West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose, who is also the chancellor of universities.
Recently, similar complications surfaced at Jadavpur University (JU), where the proposal to convene a working committee meeting of the university by the current interim vice-chancellor was rejected by the state education department.