Bill passed to replace Guv with Edu min as 'visitor' of pvt varsities

Kolkata: The West Bengal Private University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022 was passed at the state Assembly on Tuesday paving the way to appoint Education Minister Bratya Basu as the 'visitor' of private universities in the state, replacing Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar.

The Bill was passed by a voice vote after opposition BJP MLAs staged a walkout, protesting against it as soon as the Education minister Bratya Basu started delivering his reply to the Bill after more than 90 minutes of discussion in which both Trinamool Congress MLAs and BJP MLAs took part.

Speaking on the reasons behind the need for the introduction of such a Bill, Basu accused the Governor of taking powers of the University Grants Commission into his own hands, being the 'visitor 'of private universities.

"He (The Governor) has formed a committee and said that he will be visiting the private universities and prepare a report on them. So, the Governor has assumed that he has the right to interfere in the functioning of the private universities. However, as per rules, the University Grants Commission (UGC) is responsible for the supervision of these varsities and if it finds any irregularity in any university it issues a warning and gives a time frame to the varsity concerned for rectifying the loopholes. If the varsity fails then the UGC has the power to cancel the affiliation of the varsity," Basu said.

He maintained that the action of the Governor bears testimony to his hyper-activeness. "He is trying to take away the power of the UGC in his own hands to embroil the state government in litigation. We are dead against such an unwanted committee for guardianship in the private universities," he added.

There are 403 private universities in the country among which 11 are in Bengal. According to Basu, states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar among others have a large number of private universities but the 'visitor' concept is absent in these states. Interestingly, in BJP-ruled states like Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh too there is no provision of the chancellor as a visitor of university.

In Bengal, the Governor is presently the chancellor of all the 11 private universities barring Techno India University.

Basu indicated that the state government may also consider an amendment in the West Bengal Private University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022 when the term of the present government gets over.

In December 2021, several vice-chancellors of the private universities had not attended a meeting convened by the Governor at Raj Bhavan.