Madurai Kamaraj University Vice-Chancellor P. Chellathurai has made appointments to three key positions of Registrar, Director of Distance Education (DDE) and Public Relations Officer (PRO), barely a day after he took charge late in the evening of Saturday.
While the position of DDE incidentally fell vacant with the tenure of incumbent J. Balan coming to an end on Friday, the incumbent Registrar (in charge) G. Arumugam and PRO K. Sundaramoorthi were relieved from their duty with immediate effect on Sunday.
Instead, V. Chinniah, Chairperson of School of Business Studies, has been appointed as Registrar (in charge), V. Kalaiselvan, Associate Professor and Head of Department of English Language Studies, as DDE (in charge) and K. Arivazhagan as PRO (in charge).
Many senior faculty members The Hindu spoke to expressed dissatisfaction over the appointments. Speaking on anonymity, they said the appointments went against the precedence set by Higher Education Department in the MKU earlier this year, when temporary appointments to senior administrative positions like Registrar, Controller of Examination, and Dean (College Development Council) were made on the basis of seniority.
They pointed out in particular to the appointment of an Associate Professor with relatively less experience as DDE. They also highlighted that Mr. Arivazhagan, a Superintendent-rank official, was transferred from the post of PRO earlier this year as his previous appointment to the post was allegedly against the university statute, according to which only a person in the cadre of Assistant Registrar (AR) or above can be appointed as PRO.
Mr. Arivazhagan was also listed as an accused in a 2014 criminal case pending in Nagamalai Pudukottai police station in Madurai against former VC Kalyani Mathivanan, present VC Chellathurai and few others for allegedly attacking A. Srinivasan, who as part of ‘Save MKU Coalition’, had opposed the appointment of Ms. Kalyani Mathivanan.
Two resign
Significantly, the three appointments were followed by the resignations of K. Muthuchelian, CoE (in-charge), and K. Ravichandran, who was handling the positions of Special Officer and Director (Research), late on Monday evening.
The two, however, denied any significance to the resignation and instead said they had just made a ‘request’ to relieve them from their posts so that they could focus on academic work.
University sources said they submitted their request to Mr. Chinniah, who took charge as Registrar (in charge) on Monday, and a decision on the same was yet to be taken by V-C since he was in Chennai.
When contacted, Mr. Chellathurai denied violations in the appointments. Stating that Mr. Kalaiselvan had adequate experience and his Professor promotion was due, he said, “Importantly, Distance Education centre is facing a lot of challenges with falling revenues and issues in approvals from University Grants Commission. There is a need for a dynamic person with good communication skills and Mr. Kalaiselvan fits the bill.”
Regarding the criminal case, he said that it was filed against him and few others, including Mr. Arivazhagan, based on false allegations. “Since some of the accused approached the court for quashing the FIR, the case is still pending. Otherwise, the police would have naturally relieved us from the case based on investigation,” he said.
Claiming that there was no requirement that only an AR should be appointed as PRO, he said that all the new appointments were made on their ability to deliver results. “Moreover, all the three have been appointed as ‘in charge.’ Steps will be soon be initiated for proper appointments,” he said.
