A meeting of the Academic Council of the University of Kerala held on Monday was marked with noisy protests against the Vice Chancellor’s decision to turn down certain resolutions that were raised by some members.
Members of the council, who represented left-leaning teachers’ associations, had sought to include nearly 20 resolutions in the agenda for discussion. However, their demand was rejected by Vice Chancellor P.K. Radhakrishnan who held the view that the issues raised pertained to administrative matters of the varsity and were beyond the purview of the council.
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However, 30 members stuck to their demand and claimed that the issues were purely academic and that they were, in fact, closely related to some of the items included in the agenda for discussion.
With the members staging a protest within the University premises, the meeting, which was scheduled to start at 10 a.m., got under way only by 11.30 a.m. This was following a meeting that Dr. Radhakrishnan had with the agitating members.
Later, the proceedings of the meeting was also affected with many members opposing the Vice Chancellor’s move to implement a University Grants Commission (UGC) directive that barred universities from appointing adjunct faculty as research supervisors. As a result, varsities will be able to allocate supervisors from amongst only regular faculty members in departments or affiliated PG colleges.
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A section of the Academic Council held the view that while the UGC norms set the retirement age at 65 with an extension up to 5 years possible, the situation in the State was different. As a result, nearly 50 per cent of the research students were likely to suffer by way of the directive.
Lack of faculty members
The lack of regular faculty members in certain subjects such as Home Sciences was also raised at the meeting. The meeting urged the Vice Chancellor to write to the UGC, stating the difficulties in implementing the order.