Mumbai varsity polls to form governing bodies will be held in two phases
For the last two years, the university has been working with ad hoc bodies without elected members, owing to the state government's embargo on elections
After relying on ad hoc governing bodies for its day-to-day decision making for two years, the University of Mumbai (MU) is finally set to get full-fledged bodies.
Kick starting the process for electing these bodies, the university will, on Saturday, release the electoral rolls of four constituencies - college principals, heads of departments, management representatives, and university teachers. The lists of the two remaining, and larger, constituencies — MU's registered graduates and university teachers - will be released later.
For the last two years, the university has been working with ad hoc bodies without elected members, owing to the state government's embargo on elections. The embargo was lifted when the state introduced a new law to govern the state’s public universities - Maharashtra Public Universities Act 2016. The act required the varsities to form new bodies by November 30. However, since some universities, including MU, were unable to conduct the elections on time, the state recently issued an ordinance pushing the deadline to February 28.
The elections will be conducted in two phases. In the first phase, 19 positions in the senate will be filled by the elected representatives of college management, principals and university teachers, while three college heads of departments will be elected to boards of studies for each of the subjects. The election for the positions to be filled by registered graduates and college teachers will be held later.
"The stakeholders are requested to go through their respective electoral rolls and if there's any objection, convey it to the university administration," said Dinesh Kamble, in-charge registrar, MU. For the first phase of elections, the stakeholders have until December 6 to register their complaints. The revised lists will be issued on December 9. If the stakeholders still have any complaints, they can appeal to the vice-chancellor.
Every non-agricultural public university in the state is run by a number of statutory bodies such as senate, academic council, management council and boards of studies, responsible for making policies and taking important decisions on administrative and academic matters.The membership of these bodies includes university's office-bearers, representatives of the state government and legislature, nominees of vice-chancellor and the governor and elected representatives of various constituencies.
