A citizens’ inquiry committee on Tuesday urged the Governor and Chancellor, K. Rosaiah, to set up a high-level academic committee to go into “all the excesses and patently illegal activities” by the Vice-Chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University.
The committee, which submitted its report to the Higher Education Minister, the Chief Minister’s Cell and the University Grants Commission, recommended that the process for selection of Vice-Chancellors be radically altered and called for a national debate on it by academics. “The present process leads to corruption, and in practice, the post is virtually auctioned off to the highest bidder, or sometimes the vacancies are filled with the relatives of the ruling party politicians,” the report said. The inquiry committee, comprising former professors and alumni of the university, conducted a public hearing in Madurai on March 22 of the grievances of affected students and professors.
It said Vice-Chancellor Kalyani Mathivanan had “earned this post merely because she is a close relative of a former minister and a present ruling party heavyweight.”
