Harmanpreet Kaur to skip JU convocation; AICTE chairman to be chief guest

Kolkata: Indian women’s cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur will not attend Jadavpur University’s convocation on December 24 to receive the D.Litt (Honoris Causa) as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has not granted permission for her appearance, university officials said.

The university had planned to confer the honorary degree on Kaur, a proposal already approved by the Chancellor, Governor C V Ananda Bose. She was contacted by phone and e-mail after the clearance. JU vice-chancellor Chiranjib Bhattacharya said: “Harmanpreet Kaur was interested, but BCCI permission was not granted. So she is not coming to receive the D.Litt.”

With her inability to attend, the special convocation to confer the D.Litt has been shelved, while the annual convocation for students will proceed as scheduled.

An urgent online meeting of the Executive Council, the university’s highest decision-making body, was held on Monday to review the situation. Although the agenda was discussed, the meeting remained inconclusive after a new issue concerning the registrar’s appointment took precedence. The post has been vacant since Snehamanju Basu retired in November 2024, and the tenure of acting registrar Indrajit Banerjee ended on November 30 without any extension or successor.

Meanwhile, the university has finalised AICTE chairman T G Sitharam as the chief guest for the convocation. The Executive Council had earlier shortlisted five names in order of preference — Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, former ISRO chairman S Somanath, DRDO chairman Samir V Kamat, IIT Kharagpur director Suman Chakraborty and Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) CEO Shivkumar Kalyanaraman. None were available, leading to the decision to invite Sitharam as the chief guest.