The vice-chancellor search committees for the University of Madras, Anna University and Madurai Kamaraj University have submitted their lists with the names of three candidates each to the Governor, who is the Chancellor.
The members of the three committees were invited on Friday to submit the names, but only the MKU and Anna University committees submitted the lists.
The Madras University search panel submitted its name on Saturday as one of the members was not available on Friday, sources said.
Chancellor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao is expected to call each of the candidates separately for interview just as he had done for the Fisheries University a few weeks ago.
Pro-Chancellor and Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar was present during the interview.
“It is the norm in central universities to conduct interview of candidates. Such a procedure was in place during S.L. Khurana’s tenure as Chancellor,” said a senior academician.
This time, the search panels followed the MHRD UGC norms for applications, which requires that the candidate be an academician with 10 years experience as a professor or must have been in academics in an administrative organisation or a research institute or should have been an ‘A’ grade principal to qualify for the post.
The search committee members are expected to give three names in an alphabetic order with the signature of all three members. The Pro-Chancellor (the Higher Education Minister in this case) is expected to be observer during the interviews.
Ordinance coming
It is understood that an ordinance is being readied by the government to amend the norms for changing the structure of the search panel.
The MKU search committee was constituted in 2015, whereas Madras University and Anna University committees were constituted in January 2016 and May 2016 respectively.
Yet, the committees were unable to come up with a panel of three names. This led to administrative difficulties in the institutions.
University academicians have been demanding that the search committees be dissolved and reconstituted since there were many allegations of irregularities and lack of transparency.
Academicians say a committee should be given a time frame of three to six months and if it fails then it should automatically be dissolved and a fresh search committee be constituted in its place.
