The inquiry will be conducted by a one-member commission which will be headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court, said sources. The Governor is the chancellor of all state universities.
The development comes after the row over a one-day convention organised by the Trinamool Congress-run professors’ organisation WebCupa at the Gour Banga University grounds in March last week. Apart from senior TMC leader and Education Minister Bratya Basu, about 1,700 representatives of various colleges and universities of the state participated in the event.
Following the event, Bose ordered the removal of the university’s vice-chancellor Rajat Kishore Dey, but he was later reinstated by the Mamata Banerjee-led state government. The government had called Dey’s removal a “unilateral” decision by Bose. On Wednesday, reports surfaced that Bose had asked the government to remove state education minister Bratya Basu from the Cabinet for allegedly violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). Basu had called the action against him “laughable”.
Reacting to the Governor’s order for an inquiry, Basu wrote on ‘X’: “It is interesting to note that the Chancellor and Governor has ordered a judicial inquiry into the corruption, violence and misuse of university campuses in West Bengal for electioneering and political purposes. Now, as we all know that the government is not run through virtual social media like X or Facebook – the order of this inquiry should reach the government as well as the media. One more interesting thing is that the ‘Chancellor and Governor’ has ordered an enquiry! Now, the question is that can the Chancellor exercise the powers which the Governor can? #Confusion Reigns Supreme!”
Meanwhile, the BJP said that if the ruling TMC feels that Bose was “partisan”, it should move court. Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said, “Nobody is above the Constitution of India. Bratya Basu as a Cabinet Minister has violated the MCC and action must be taken against him. If they (TMC) feels that the Governor is partisan, they should approach the court.”
The Educationists’ Forum, West Bengal has called the order for the inquiry a “planned conspiracy to undermine and demolish higher education” in Bengal by the Chancellor of the 31 public universities of West Bengal.
In a statement issued on Friday, the forum said: “Since early 2023, the misuse of authority, illegal authorisation, demolition of authority structure in the universities, illegal collection of funds, virtual closure of new universities of the state, false accusations against senior academicians of the state, misrepresentation before the High Court and the Supreme Court, arbitrary removal of authorised VCs – have been a part of the Chancellor’s manifold illegalities against the higher education system, processes and the relevant acts and statutes governing the functioning of the universities of West Bengal.”
The forum also accused the Governor of “targeting’ Basu.
“Since the pretention and deliberate misrepresentation of the Chancellor has been fully exposed by the higher education Department through the order based on 2017 Act and 2019 Regulations, the Chancellor has now targeted the Hon’ble Minister in Charge of Higher Education and most ridiculously sought his removal. It seems that the Chancellor/ Governor has forgotten that our country has a parliamentary system of government where popularly elected representatives form the government and that he has no role in this regard,” read the statement.
The directive serves as the latest turn in the longstanding power tussle between the Governor and the higher education department. On Wednesday, the Governor released a ‘status report’ about universities and criticised the state government for “attempting to control the universities in West Bengal”. The TMC government then issued a nine-page letter as a reply to the ‘status report’’ on Friday. In the letter, the government has alleged that the Governor was trying to “undermine” the state’s power by appointing interim vice-chancellors in the university.