The All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA) has written to President Ram Nath Kovind to not just speed up the process of appointing Vice-Chancellors to more than 20 universities which are "facing administrative problems and delay in faculty recruitment as there are no regular Vice-Chancellors", but have also demanded that there be more Dalit representation in these posts. The ABVP had also asked for the appointment of VCs recently and had sent a letter from almost every single university.
These 21 universities include globally recognised and acclaimed central universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Benaras Hindu University (BHU). The University of Delhi had been embroiled in controversy ever since its former VC Dr Yogesh Tyagi was suspended and has not got a permanent replacement yet.
But all these universities do have acting VCs performing their duties. So what is the issue? After all there is a pandemic going on, one might think. Kiran Kumar, President, All India OBC Students Association and a research scholar at the Department of Political Science, UoH explained, "The appointment of regular Vice-Chancellors will help in taking administrative decisions and strengthening academic activities. Regular Vice-Chancellors are needed for speeding up the recruitment process as half of the faculty positions of reserved categories are vacant. The old faculty are either retiring or about to retire. If there are less number of permanent faculty, that means lesser PhD students and that means less research. These are universities that make it to the top of India's list when we compare on a global scale. The quality of the universities will fall if this goes on," said Kiran.
He also added that there is need for inclusiveness in these posts and that having a President who belongs to a Scheduled Caste should have helped and they hope he will pay more attention to the issue. There are only six SC and six ST VCs out of 496 VCs in India, found an RTI. "The VCs are almost all from the upper castes. There is no provision for inclusiveness for the appointment of VCs," said Kiran. "The President should appoint OBC, SC, and ST Vice-Chancellors for more than half of the positions," demanded the AIOBCSA.
