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Karl Marx once wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
In the case of Bihar’s education department and the Raj Bhavan, the same issue has now cropped up for the third time in the past five days, proving that political bullheadedness at the cost of the proper functioning of varsities is worse than farce.
The matter, at least as of Monday morning, stood resolved.
The state education department called a meeting of vice-chancellors and other top officials of the state-run universities on March 28 and 29. Their letter, which was sent out to the registrars of all state-run universities stated that the meeting would be chaired by education minister Sunil Kumar.
By evening, another letter went out. It read the same but left out one crucial phrase about Kumar chairing the meeting.
This happened after the VCs — who directly report to the Chancellor, a position held by the Governor of the state — raised a question over whether they should attend the meeting.
They sought the opinion of their boss on whether they should attend a meeting chaired by anyone lower than a minister.
What’s at stake? According to the letter, “the meeting-cum-orientation workshop, with facilities of stay at Patna-based Hotel Maurya, will focus on quality education, timely academic sessions and conduct of exams, time-bound resolution of court cases, accounts management and other administrative and academic issues. The Vc, Pro-VC, financial advisor, registrar, exam controller and finance officer will participate in the meeting.”
Kumar took charge after Nitish Kumar’s cabinet expansion on March 15. He met Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar to discuss issues that persist in higher education and devised a revision to a letter that was issued on Saturday (March 23) by director of higher education Rekha Kumari, a senior Raj Bhawan official confirmed.
When they received Saturday’s letter, the vice-chancellors of two universities — BN Mandal University (Madhepura) and TM Bhagalpur University — sought the guidelines to attend a meeting to be chaired by the education minister, and the Governor granted permission for them to attend. “After due consideration, the Governor has granted permission for the meeting and also directed that all the aspects be discussed in detail,” said a letter from the Raj Bhawan on March 25 to all VCs, a copy of which was sent to all the university officials.
However, late Monday evening, the education department revised the letter for the third time in as many days and addressed it directly to the VCs. The department had earlier sent a letter to registrars. While the sum of the letter remained the same, the reference to the education minister chairing the meeting was removed. As a result, the VCs said that they would seek fresh guidelines from the Governor in view of the fresh letter.
A department official said on the condition of anonymity that the name of the minister was omitted due to the model code in place but did not elaborate why it was included in the previous letter when the election was announced on March 16 only.
The stand-off between the Raj Bhavan and the department of education has been continuing for quite some time in an apparent bid to wield control over state universities, which are grappling with severe issues, including shortage of teachers, late sessions, poor infrastructure, delayed salary payment and pension to retired teachers and employees. The Governor, as the Chancellor, is the academic and administrative head of the universities, while the government provides the grants.
Rinse, repeat
The higher education director had first sent a letter to the registrars of all varsities on March 21, calling for a meeting on March 28-29 with the same agenda. That letter did not have any reference to the education minister. It just mentioned the agenda, and the letter was from the higher education action director, who reports to the Additional CS. In the past also, the VCs and registrars had refused to attend the meetings called by the director or secretary at the direction of the Governor.
This is the third time such a meeting has been called after VCs and other top officials failed to attend the previous two (February 28 and March 15) on the direction of the Governor. In those two instances, the department threatened them with action for skipping the meeting and seeking guidelines from the Chancellor instead. The department also served show-cause notices to the VCs, registrars and exam controllers of all the state universities and ordered that their salary and university budget be stopped and FIRs be lodged against them.
However, the Governor, who is the Chancellor of state universities, intervened strongly. The Raj Bhawan wrote to the treasury officials as well the banks that the department letter was quashed by the Governor’s order. The Raj Bhawan also wrote to the Chief Secretary, seeking action against education department officials for their “wanton interference in the academic and administrative matters of universities and use of indecent language”.
“The wanton interference of some officials is only to be deprecated and it is expected that an explanation is sought and this office is apprised of the result of enquiries made and follow up action taken,” said the letter from Robert L Chongthu, principal secretary to the Governor, to the chief secretary, ordering withdrawal of the letter from the department secretary Baidyanath Yadav.
Raj Bhavan versus education department
Earlier this month, the Raj Bhavan wrote to the additional chief secretary (education) KK Pathak, seeking to know what action had been taken towards withdrawal of the letter issued by Yadav on February 28, through which the department had served show-cause notice to the VCs, registrars and exam controllers of all the state universities for skipping the meeting on Chancellor’s direction and threatened action, including freeze on bank accounts, lodging of FIRs, stopping of their salary and budget of universities.
“I am directed to invite a reference to the discussion held on March 8 in the presence of the Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister, Bihar and your goodself before the Governor-cum-Chancellor, in which it was decided that the education department will withdraw its letter forthwith. However, no communication has yet been received in this Secretariat about withdrawal of the said letter,” said the letter from Chongthu to the ACS (education).
Taking exception to the department’s freeze order and threatening tone in letters, the Chancellor had also issued a direction to the VCs and other officials not to leave headquarters without permission of the Raj Bhavan, which was a clear message that they need not attend the meeting called by the department official.
While the stand off continued, Raj Bhavan continued to hold meetings with VCs and attended meetings in universities, which also required the presence of education department representatives. At the JP University senate meeting, the Governor presided and a seat was also allotted for ACS (education) KK Pathak, but he did not attend. The Governor, on his part, directed the department to clear retirement dues of teachers and employees without delay, ensure timely salary payment and work to create a better atmosphere for the benefit of education.
Retired teachers and employees of the university await their pension for three months, while the working ones are yet to get their March salary in many universities. Some universities have made the payment through internal resources in anticipation that their grants would come. The guest faculties in the universities have not been paid their salary for up to 10 months and are also up in arms.
A power tussle
“The Governor has made it clear that an officer cannot call the vice chancellors for the meeting. There is a laid down protocol. And more importantly, the kind of threatening language used by the officers of the education department is not acceptable. The department should do its job and not cross the line, as it also has a lot of answering to do for the problems afflicting the universities. Without addressing the root cause of the problems, results cannot be achieved. It is wrong to assume that just one man is working and the rest are not,” said a Raj Bhavan official.
Earlier also, when the department had issued parallel advertisements for the appointment of VCs, the Raj Bhawan had written to the chief secretary about the need to set the education department right and made it clear to the VCs that “the Chancellor’s authority is supreme in the matter of running the academic and administrative affairs of the Universities and no outside influence should be entertained”. Later, the department had to withdraw its advertisements after the CM’s intervention.
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