The appointment of Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar as the Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) elevates a Telugu man to the top position after a gap of 21 years.
Prof. Jagadeesh Kumar, presently Vice-Chancellor of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), is the third Telugu person and the second one from Telangana to have been appointed UGC Chairman.
The last man was Prof. G. Ram Reddy, who headed the top education agency of the country from 1991 to 1995 and he was from Karimnagar district. Vasireddy Sri Krishna was the first Telugu, hailing from Tenali, to have worked in the coveted position. Prof. Jagadesh was appointed after Prof. D.P. Singh completed his tenure in December 21.
Born in Mamidala village of Tipparthi mandal of Nalgonda district, Prof. Jagadesh did his primary schooling from the village and attended the high school in Miryalaguda.
He completed his B.Sc from Vivek Vardhini college in Hyderabad and then did his PG and PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. For his post-doctoral research, he joined the University of Waterloo, Canada, before coming back to India.
He worked in IIT Kharagpur and IIT Delhi before joining the JNU as a faculty where he went on to become the Vice-Chancellor during its most turbulent period after the NDA government came to power.
His tenure saw some highly controversial decisions with right-wing and left-wing student groups clashing on various issues that attracted national attention.
