Senior educationists have condemned the alleged vindictive stance of Governor Arif Mohammed Khan towards universities in Kerala. The sweeping dismissals of Vice-Chancellors has paralysed the universities that were on the track of the ongoing reforms in the higher education sector.
The joint statement issued by a group of eminent academics including K.N. Panikkar, Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib and Prabhat Patnaik took a dim view of the dismissals of the Vice-Chancellors of Calicut University and the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit by Mr. Khan in his capacity as the Chancellor of the universities.
As a result of the move, all leading universities in Kerala have been deprived of Vice-Chancellors, they lamented.
While all these Vice-Chancellors had been appointed by him, the Governor himself has dismissed them by invoking a Supreme Court verdict that invalidated the selection of a Vice-Chancellor due to an error in the composition of the selection committee.
“This action of the Chancellor, the legal validity of which is yet to be settled by the Supreme Court, is apparently a political vendetta against the State government. Academics and those concerned about the future of higher education in Kerala see this act as not only impeding the progressive turn and exerting a serious negative impact, but also as a calculated move to push anti-intellectuals into important positions,” the statement read.
The signatories also included K. Satchidanandan, C.P. Chandrasekhar, Rajan Gurukkal, Kesavan Veluthat, Michael Tharakan, Sabu Thomas, Rajan Varughese, Thomas Joseph, Gopinath Ravindran, K.N. Ganesh, J. Prasad, T.K. Narayanan and M.R. Raghava Varier.
