Faculty at Avinashilingam University have questioned the Chancellor appointing senior dean Premavathy Vijayan as Vice-Chancellor in-charge.
The faculty, who staged a protest near the V-C’s chamber on Monday, sought an explanation on the appointment.
Their contention was that the Chancellor, T.S.K. Meenakshi Sundaram, was not empowered to appoint anybody to the University when his continuance was untenable as per law and they had questioned the same. The Chancellor had the powers to only nominate persons to the Board of Management, Board of Studies or other bodies in the University.
The University administration should have constituted a search panel well ahead of the end of the tenure of the last V-C to find the next person. But the administration deliberately did not constitute a search panel. It also did not fill the Registrar’s post though the faculty had raised the issue in the Board of Management meeting.
The University had only a Registrar in-charge for the past nine months.
They clarified that their protest in no way questioned the eligibility of Ms. Vijayan but only the power of the Chancellor to appoint her. The faculty promised to continue their protest on Tuesday if they did not get a satisfactory reply to their queries.
