The search committee, set up by the Human Resource Development Ministry for identifying a chairperson for the University Grants Commission (UGC), has been unable to meet as one of the experts approached by the Ministry has declined the offer.
Informed sources told The Hindu astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar has decline to be part of the committee due to “pre-occupation.” However, the three others approached by the Ministry – Madhava Menon and Goverdhan Mehta (both academicians) and Srinath Reddy, President of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) — have agreed to be members of the committee which is expected to be notified soon.
The Ministry initiated the process of looking for a chairperson after its hopes of an early establishment of the proposed of National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) remained unfulfilled with the Bill awaiting Cabinet clearance.
The Bill envisages creation of NCHER, an overarching regulatory body that would subsume all existing regulatory bodies, including the UGC and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
The charge of the UGC at present is with its Vice-Chairperson Professor Ved Prakash as per the UGC Act, 1956. The Ministry delayed the search process after Professor Sukhadeo Thorat's term ended in February as it intended to introduce the NCHER Bill, 2011 in Parliament during the Budget session, but could not do so because of the ongoing turf war between the HRD Ministry and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on the jurisdiction of medical education. Despite several attempts from the Prime Minister's Office to arrive at a compromise, the issue remained unresolved.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry will shortly issue an ordinance to extend the term of the Board of Governors of the Medical Council of India, which was created after the MCI general council was superseded following the arrest of its former president, Ketan Desai, on charges of corruption.
The MCI was superseded through an act of Parliament only for a year on the hope that the Ministry would be able to create a National Commission for Human Resource in Health — a regulatory body that would bring under its purview all councils related to health — by then. However, the bill is yet to get a Cabinet clearance.
