Page 14 - EW February 2025_Neat

Education News

DELHI UGC corner office in 2022.
Controversial revised guidelines Jagdish Kumar’s latest initiative

is the draft of a seemingly innocu-
ous circular titled UGC (Minimum
Qualifications for Appointment
and Promotion of Teachers and
Academic Staff in Universities
and Colleges and Measures for the
Maintenance of Standards in Higher
Education) Regulations 2025,
released for public consultation on
January 6, with a feedback deadline
of February 5 (extended to February
28). These guidelines intended to
replace a similar document of 2018,
have provoked a national uproar
and may well create a constitutional
crisis with six opposition-ruled states
slamming them as “anti-federal” and
infringement of the autonomy of
state governments.
UGC HQ Delhi. Inset: M. Jagdish Kumar Under s.10 of the draft, composi-
tion of mandatory Search cum Selec-
idely believed to be the tacularly well-remunerated faculty. tion Committees (SCSC) to shortlist
go-to academic of the Soon after the BJP government candidates for appointment of vice
WRSS, BJP leadership at was sworn-in at the Centre, stu- chancellors of 520 state universities
the Centre, Mamadala Jagdish dents’ demonstrations and incendi- will be the state Governor appointed
Kumar, Chairman of the University ary speeches became normative on by the Centre, a nominee of UGC
Grants Committee (UGC), invested JNU’s verdant 1,000-acre campus in chairman, and one nominee of the
with all-important recognition and the heart of Delhi. Jagdish Kumar’s university’s apex body (Senate/
grants dispensing powers to colleges brief was reportedly to quell the Executive Council). This is a major
and universities countrywide, has “chaos on the campus” and restore departure from the 2018 guidelines
a penchant for stirring the prover- the rule of law. under which SCSCs comprised three-
bial hornet’s nest. An alumnus of Following a campus rally on five eminent educationists recom-
IIT-Madras and the University of February 2016 called by JNUSU to mended by state governments (for
Waterloo, Canada, Jagdish Kumar protest the execution of Afzal Guru, state government universities) with
was a low profile professor of electri- a Kashmiri academic found guilty of one of them being a UGC representa-
cal engineering in IIT-Delhi for over terrorism against the state, Kanhaiya tive. On the recommendation of the
a decade until the BJP was swept to Kumar, a Ph D student and president SCSC the Governor in his capacity
power in Delhi in 2014. of JNUSU was arrested and charged as ex-officio chancellor appoints the
Two years later, Jagdish Kumar with sedition. Subsequently, “never selected VC.
was plucked from obscurity and ap- hesitant” to call in the police to quell Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana,
pointed Vice Chancellor of the pres- students protests and reportedly West Bengal, and Karnataka have
tigious Jawaharlal Nehru University encouraging the growth of ABVP — strongly opposed the new guidelines
(JNU), Delhi in 2016, reportedly the students wing of BJP — within under which state governments
with the mission to bring Left wing two years Jagdish Kumar succeeded which legislate and fund state uni-
students and faculty who dominated in restoring equilibrium on the JNU versities will have no representation
this show-piece postgrad university campus, with the past few years be- in SCSCs. In effect they have no
(estb.1969) to heel. The election of ing of relative calm. say in the appointment of VCs with
the BJP and especially “fascist” prime As a result, at the end of two Central government officials (state
minister Narendra Modi was anath- three-year terms as Vice Chancel- governor and UGC representative)
ema to the powerful JNUSU (Jawa- lor of JNU, ranked among India’s constituting the majority in SCSCs.
harlal Nehru University Students’ Top 10 universities under the Union “Education must remain in the
Union), subsidised with rock-bottom education ministry’s NIRF Rankings, hands of those chosen by the people,
tuition-cum-residence fees and spec- Jagdish Kumar was promoted to the not dictated by Governors acting

14 EDUCATIONWORLD FEBRUARY 2025