The Vice-Chancellor search panel of the University of Madras held a meeting for nearly five hours on Thursday but came up with no result.
The panel was expected to meet on Wednesday and arrive at a consensus on a set of three probable candidates, whose names would be passed on to the Governor-Chancellor for a final decision. The meeting, however, was postponed to Thursday.
On Thursday, the meeting began at 11 a.m. and went on till 3.30 p.m. but the panel did not finalise the names. As many as 60 candidates, including former Vice-Chancellors, have applied for the post. The convenor of the search panel is P.N. Veda Narayanan, retired commissioner of Vigilance and Development. The other two members are R. Balasubramanian, a former professor of the University and currently faculty at SRM University and R. Surendira Prasad, currently a full-time Ph. D. student at the University.
At a meeting held on January 24 the panel had short-listed nine names. It was widely believed that the panel would meet the next week to finalise the names of three candidates. A member, however, said on Thursday they had only short-listed eligible candidates according to the UGC norms. He also said that two more meetings would be held before the panel was ready with the probable names.
In January, around a dozen Syndicate members had met the higher education secretary A. Karthik and sought the dismantling of the convenor committee, which is currently administering the affairs of the University in place of a V-C.
Thursday’s developments were a disappointment for many Syndicate members, who are worried that files are accumulating. “All three persons in the convenor committee must sign the files for orders to be passed. The committee has non-academic members who do not understand the gravity of the situation. By March, the registrar’s tenure will end. We are staring at the possibility of an academic council meeting without a V-C., Controller of Examination and a Registrar,” said a Syndicate member.
