Supreme Court adjourns Bengal university VC row to January 2026
Telegraph | 18 December 2025
The Supreme Court on Wednesday briefly adjourned to January 2026, without specifying a date, the hearing on the row over the appointment of vice-chancellors of various state universities in Bengal, following differences between governor C.V. Ananda Bose and chief minister Mamata Banerjee over several names.
On Wednesday, when the matter came up for hearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, Attorney General R.Venkataramani, representing Bose in the matter, sought listing of the matter in January, saying: “There is some good progress being made. Kindly have it in January 2026.”
The bench, which also included Justice Joymalya Bagchi, then agreed to the same. Accordingly, it posted the matter for hearing in January next year.
Counsels appearing for the Bengal government did not object to the request.
The matter had witnessed several such adjournments upon requests from both sides, which had indicated that differences between the governor — who is the chancellor of the universities — and the chief minister are being narrowed down and resolved.
The apex court also held certain “in-chamber” meetings with the Attorney General and senior advocate Jaideep Gupta for the Bengal government.
During the last hearing on December 3, Jaideep Gupta stated that the differences were mainly related to five or six names of VCs for different universities.
While acceding to the adjournment request, CJI Surya Kant said the matter would be taken up for hearing within the chambers of the judges — in other words, there would be no open court hearing as in normal matters.
The bench at that time comprised CJI Surya Kant, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh had passed the following terse order, “As jointly prayed for, post the matter on 19-12-2025 in chamber.”
The matter had come up for consideration for over half a dozen times during the past year, but no effective hearing could take place as the two sides mostly articulated their own positions.
On July 8 last year, the apex court had constituted a search-cum-selection committee for all universities in Bengal, headed by former Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit, to break the logjam between the governor and the chief minister over the appointment of VCs to the various universities in the state.
The apex court had passed the order while dealing with an appeal filed by the Bengal government and certain PIL petitioners challenging Calcutta High Court’s concurrent judgments upholding the interim appointment made by the governor to various universities in the state, following differences between the two constitutional functionaries on the names of the VCs for over 34 universities in Bengal.
However, some of the names had been cleared following the Supreme Court’s intervention.