Editorial: SU in the News, Again

Serious allegations have been levelled against the recruitment process underway at the Sikkim University; this time, by faculty members dissatisfied with the manner in which the entire process was managed and questioning the intent behind what they see as obvious moves to subvert fair-play. While the university has often been the target of allegations in the past, from students and even the ruling party, the latest development acquires more significance because it comes from the faculty themselves and has been tabled with the Executive Council and is not merely being played out in the media. The news-report on the allegations published in today’s edition details their arguments and there is no need to go over them again. What is important, however, is to recognise the seriousness of the allegations and the fact that it has been tabled with a statutory body of the University. There will be obvious sniggers of the petitioners being sore losers, but it needs to be recognised that the arguments forwarded by the six Assistant Professors cannot be dismissed offhand since they back it with substantial documents and are even risking their future prospects of employment in the networked world of the academia by sticking their necks out. From information available at hand, the Executive Council is the forum available to the aggrieved faculty members for complaints like this. The ball is now in the Executive Council’s court, and now that the issue has been released into the public domain, what it decides and how it explains its decision will be closely followed not only by those in academic circles, but also the media and the people at large. It is also definite that the issue will be taken up by political parties and that the exchanges will become nastier for all concerned sides. One only hopes that in the din which is bound to explode now, the root questions asked about what the desired administrative procedures should be, are convincingly settled. The Office Memorandum of the Department of Secondary and Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, GoI, quoted by the petitioning SU faculty members, before it stipulates that Vice Chancellors cannot exercise their emergency powers for “routine matters” like finalising recruitment procedures, explains that the guideline is being issued because of rising complaints that VCs have been invoking emergency powers “as a matter of routine” and that statutory bodies like the Executive Council “increasing asked to endorse action take on their behalf by the Vice Chancellors”. The guideline stipulating matters for which the VCs should not invoke their emergency powers, the Office Memorandum in question explains, was being issued so that this “rather regressive development” is checked and the statutory bodies allowed to play the “critical important role” envisaged for them in the “overall democratic governance of the Universities”. The new Executive Council at Sikkim University has now been drawn into the debate and how it interprets the Office Memorandum in question [which is of June 2001 vintage, the matter, it appears, has been one of concern for a while now] and the concerned statutes of the Sikkim University Act referred to by the protesting faculty members, will also set a precedence for all Central Universities on this issue. This will be interesting and significant, even if complicated and vexed, issue to follow...