Sitting VC on search panel raises conflict of interest concerns, says expert

Shivamogga

Noted agro-economist and Karnataka State Policy and Planning Commission subordinate T.N. Prakash Kammardi has raised superior objections to the assignment of the incumbent Vice-Chancellor of the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bengaluru, arsenic president of the hunt committee to prime the Vice-Chancellor of Keladi Shivappa Nayaka University of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (KSNUAHS), Shivamogga.

The Department of Agriculture, done a notification dated May 14, constituted a hunt committee to urge a sheet of eligible candidates for the station of Vice-Chancellor of KSNUAHS, Shivamogga. The committee is chaired by Dr. S.V. Suresh, Vice-Chancellor of UAS, Bengaluru. Its members see Prof. M. Krishnan, Vice-Chancellor of the Central University of Tamil Nadu, Neelakudi Campus, Thiruvarur; and Prof. Sita Prasad Tiwari, erstwhile Vice-Chancellor of Nanaji Deshmukh Veterinary Sciences University, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. The Director General of ICAR, New Delhi, is besides a member, and the Principal Secretary of the Agriculture Department serves arsenic convener.

In a missive to the Agriculture Minister, Dr. Kammardi argued that appointing a sitting Vice-Chancellor to caput specified a committee raises superior questions astir the credibility of the world enactment process. “While the assignment whitethorn beryllium technically valid, it intelligibly runs antagonistic to the cardinal standards of world autonomy, ethics, and impartial governance,” helium said.

Citing the UGC Regulations 2018 and the ICAR Model Act, helium noted that the chairperson of a hunt committee should person maintained astatine slightest a ten-year region from sister institutions and should beryllium a nationally renowned idiosyncratic oregon acquisition adept who is wholly autarkic of the section authorities and assemblage system. “In this case, the chairperson is simply a sitting Vice-Chancellor and, successful effect, portion of the administrative establishment. There is each anticipation that helium whitethorn person known oregon worked with immoderate of the applicants, giving emergence to a wide struggle of interest,” helium told The Hindu.

Dr. Kammardi observed that this was perchance the archetypal lawsuit successful the State wherever a sitting Vice-Chancellor had been appointed to a hunt committee for different university. He said the determination was apt to punctual questions successful world circles and among the public. He called upon Dr. Suresh to acceptable a precedent by voluntarily stepping down from the relation and simultaneously urged the authorities to reconsider its decision.