The Senate of the University of Madras has elected P. Jagadeesan as its nominee for the Vice-Chancellor search panel.
The tenure of the incumbent V-C S. Gowri will end on August 20. He was appointed on August 20, 2020, for a period of three years.
Mr. Jagadeesan is the former V-C of Bharathidasan University and had served as the Governor-Chancellor’s nominee in the V-C search panel for Madurai Kamaraj University in 2012.
“Only 30 members were present when the meeting started but by the end of the session it increased to 59,” said one of the attendees of Wednesday’s senate meeting.
The senate has 118 members, excluding the Governor-Chancellor and the Pro-Chancellor (Higher Education Minister).
The Madras University Teachers’ Association nominated S. Sathik, a former V-C of the University. “He withdrew his nomination when the V-C (Mr. Gowri) said the senate would go in for election. He gave five minutes’ time for the nominees to withdraw and Prof. Sathik withdrew from the contest,” said a senator.
On April 25, when the University’s Syndicate met, Higher Education Secretary D. Karthikeyan proposed the name of K. Deenabandu, retired IAS officer. P. Karthe, head of the Centre of Advanced Study in Crystellography and Biophysics, Guindy campus, seconded the nomination.
The Governor-Chancellor’s syndicate nominee B. Sarit Kumar Das, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, did not accept the choice, however. “He expressed his opinion to nominate an eminent academician as the Syndicate nominee for Search Committee and hence he recorded his dissent,” according to the minutes of the meeting that The Hindu has accessed.
