Vice-chancellors’ meeting in Ooty a regular affair, says Tamil Nadu Raj Bhavan

At a time when Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi’s call for the vice-chancellors’ conference and his invite to Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar had reignited the debate on the battle between the ruling DMK dispensation and the governor, the Raj Bhavan in a statement on Wednesday clarified that the media reports calling it as a power struggle between the governor and the government as “scandalous and far from truth.”

Stating that the annual conference of the leaders of higher educational institutions was carefully planned and organised in April every year since 2022 by the governor, the statement clarified that the conference usually unfolds frontiers of science and technologies, devises ways and means to prepare the institutions to remain competitive only to benefit the students. 

Raj Bhavan also clarified that the preparation for the annual conference begins well in advance. “Positive outcomes of these conferences are increasingly visible in measurable parameters,” the statement read.

Calling the media reports saying it was a tussle between the governor and government as “unfortunate” the press statement said “ill-informed media reports have given this well-intentioned academic exercise with the aim to achieving excellence in teaching, learning, innovation and enterprise a political twist, wrongly linked it with the recent Court judgment and tried to project it as a power struggle between the Raj Bhavan and the State Government. These are scandalous and far from the truth.” 

Vice-chancellors’ conference and the politics around it 

Two weeks after the Supreme Court ruling that Governors cannot indefinitely sit on bills, Ravi has convened a two-day conference of VCs of the state-run universities in Ooty on April 25 and 26. This is the second time Ravi will be hosting the conference since 2021. 

On April 16, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin convened a meeting with the VCs as the Supreme Court gave assent to the 10 bills passed in the assembly, which have made significant amendments to how vice-chancellors are appointed to state universities. Since Ravi took charge as the governor, there has been a running battle between the government and him over the appointment of vice-chancellors. 

But even after the Supreme Court intervened and favoured the state government upholding Stalin’s fight for federal rights and state autonomy, Ravi went all the way to Delhi and invited Dhankar, which is also interesting as the vice president voiced support for the governor immediately after the judgment. While Ravi continues to be chancellor of the universities, the Supreme Court’s assent to the bills has stripped off his powers of appointing and removing VCs from him to the government.

Sources in Raj Bhavan said that Ravi convened the conference in his capacity as the chancellor of 18 out of the 20 state-run universities. 

Even when Raj Bhavan slammed the media reports portraying the Vice Chancellors’ conference as a power struggle with the government, Ravi’s call for the conference and the invitation to Dhankar complicated the situation, as the political parties in the state, including the DMK and the AIADMK dub it as a “counter conference.”

While the DMK is waiting to capitalise on the issue, the AIADMK feels that it has landed in a spot, at a time when it has renewed its alliance with the BJP. “The DC had upheld the assembly’s authority. And at this juncture, he had called for the conference. Even if it is an annual affair, the governor can choose to either cancel or postpone the conference,” a senior AIADMK leader on conditions of anonymity told THE WEEK.

India