West Bengal vs governor The Supreme Court today (July 08), in an ongoing dispute between the West Bengal government and Governor CV Anand Bose (Chancellor of Universities) regarding the appointment of Vice-Chancellors (VC) of Universities, has ordered the constitution of a separate or joint Search Selection Committee.
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The committee will be headed by former Chief Justice of India UU Lalit (chairperson) and will be constituted within two weeks. The Chairperson will preside over every such Search Selection Committee, which shall consist of five members. Further, the Search Committee shall prepare a panel of three names for each university for VC appointments, alphabetically and not in order of merits.
The committee’s recommendations, duly endorsed by the chairperson, shall be presented to the State’s Chief Minister. If the CM has reason to believe that any such person is unsuitable, the remarks and the supporting material shall be presented to the Chancellor within two weeks.
Furthermore, the CM shall be entitled to recommend the shortlisted names in the order of preference to the Chancellor. Chancellor, in turn, will appoint the VCs out of empanelled names in the same order of preference as recommended by the CM. In case the Chancellor has any reservations about the empanelled names or the remarks made by the CM against any shortlisted candidates, he shall be entitled to put up his own opinion on file, which shall be duly supported with material and reasons.
Apart from this, in cases where the Chancellor has approved the names, the concerned department of the State has been directed to notify the appointment within one week of receipt of approval by the Chancellor.
Notably, the Court also made it clear that the court will make the final decision in cases where one party objects to the shortlisted names and the other party does not accept such objections. The Court will pass the verdict after giving a reasonable opportunity to hear the objectors.
In today’s order, the Court also laid down the time schedule according to which all the functionaries are required to function. The time period prescribed for completing the entire process is three months. Further, former CJI UU Lalit is to be paid Rupees 3 lakhs per effective meeting of the committee. Moreover, other committee expenses will be borne by the state.
The bench of Justices Surya Kant and KV Vishwanathan was hearing a Special Leave Petition filed by the State of West Bengal challenging the June 2023 judgment of the Calcutta High Court upholding the interim vice-chancellor appointments made by Governor Bose in 13 universities, in his capacity as the chancellor of the institutions.
Efforts to break the deadlock led the court to propose the constitution of a search-cum-selection committee for appointing vice-chancellors. However, the Court faced challenges in forming the committee as neither the governor nor the University Grants Commission (UGC) responded with nominees, as alleged by the state government.
This year, in April, the Court was informed that the Governor has agreed to fill up six vacancies of Vice Chancellors from the list recommended by the West Bengal Government. Besides this, the Court asked the State Government to send recommendations for the remaining vacancies.
Following this, when the matter was listed for hearing, the Court had warned both the parties that it would appoint the VCs if the parties fail to do it amicably. The warning of the Court came after it was informed that out of the names of fifteen candidates (given by the State) for appointment as VCs for fifteen universities, Chancellor found seven persons to be unsuitable and did not consider the rest.
On May 18, the Court ordered that the remaining eight persons be appointed within one week. It also directed the state government to send about twelve to fifteen names of eminent persons for reconsideration by the chancellor. This direction was passed to fill the seven vacant positions (out of fifteen).
Further, after noticing that both the parties are ad-idem on the constitution of a Search Committee for the purpose of appointing VCs in left-out universities, the Court ordered that the same will be constituted before the next date of hearing i.e., July 12, 2024.
Case Title: State of West Bengal v. Dr. Sanat Kumar Ghosh & Ors. | Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 17403 of 2023.
Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 440
