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Bengal assembly passes bill seeking to make CM chancellor of state-run varsities
Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari and six other BJP lawmakers, who are barred from attending assembly proceedings on disciplinary grounds, earlier protested outside the House against the bill
Kolkata: The West Bengal assembly on Monday passed a bill seeking to make the chief minister chancellor of 17 state-run universities in place of the governor even as the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vowed to stall the proposed legislation. As many as 182 legislators voted in favour of the bill while 40 opposition members opposed it.
Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari and six other BJP lawmakers, who are barred from attending assembly proceedings on disciplinary grounds, earlier protested outside the House against the bill and the ban on them.
“We will see how the government passes the bill. We are sitting outside but other BJP legislators will challenge its validity during the debate. Even if the Trinamool Congress (TMC) manages to pass it because of its strength, the governor will surely send the bill to the Centre since education is a subject on the concurrent list,” said Adhikari before the passage. He said chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s dream of becoming the chancellor will remain unfulfilled.
The BJP has 70 members in West Bengal’s 294-member House while TMC has 217.
West Bengal is the first state to propose such legislation even as the governor’s assent is needed for it. TMC ministers have said they may bring in ordinances if the governor does not clear the bill. Ordinances, too, need the governor’s clearance.
Tamil Nadu and Gujarat have passed legislation empowering the state governments to appoint vice-chancellors of state-funded universities. But the governors continue as chancellors. Tamil Nadu passed its legislation in April seven years after Gujarat did so in 2015.
On May 29, West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar called the legislation a ploy to divert attention from a school recruitment scam, which the Central Bureau of Investigation is probing as per a Calcutta high court directive.
Dhankhar said the government will be unable to pass the bill easily. “Who becomes the chancellor and whether the role of the governor can be curtailed are things that I will examine when the papers come to me. This is a ploy; a tactic to generate media optics to divert attention from what is happening in the recruitment scam. It is the mother of all scams,” he said.
The government also wants to make the education minister the visitor of the nine private universities, replacing the governor.
