Fresh executive council sought by TS varsities

Warangal Urban: The issue of reconstitution of the full-fledged executive council (EC) has come to the fore again as Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari directed vice-chancellors to issue notifications for the recruitment of teaching faculty by March-end and to complete the process latest by June.

Though the ex-officio members under the chairmanship of a vice-chancellor are taking decisions on behalf of the council, their decisions are likely to be challenged in the court of law by aggrieved parties. Sometimes the decisions may not be able to withstand legal scrutiny. Keeping this in mind, a full-fledged EC is a must as it will help to avoid legal issues that may arise during or post teacher recruitment.

Teaching and non-teaching staff are requesting the Telangana government to constitute the EC at the earliest before releasing the teacher recruitment notification. Association of Kakatiya University Teachers (AKUT) president Dr R Mallikarjun Reddy welcomed the government’s decision to take up the recruitment. “But, it must constitute EC to avoid legal tangles,” he said, adding that the State must also review the sanctioned posts at KU as the government ignored some departments such as education and geology.

Permission was accorded for some subjects — sericulture and library science — for which there are no sanctioned vacant posts, and strangely, this time permissions were accorded college and subject-wise. “The government must take up the corrections before issuing the notification,” said Dr K Suresh Devath, senior research scholar.

The Kakatiya University administration began to fill up 136 teaching posts after the government issued an order (GO 34) on November 25last year, granting permission to recruit teachers.
The EC consists of five ex-officio members including vice-chancellor, and six nominated members. But since April 2010, no member was nominated to the EC by the State government.
He also observed that there will be no legal sanctity to the decisions to be taken by the skeleton Executive Council having only ex-officio members, and reminded that the AP High Court had even declared as illegal the appointment of two assistant professors in the zoology department of KU. It said they were done by the Executive Council of the varsity without the required quorum in 2011.

“The council must have at least one third of its members present when it undertakes important works such as making appointments. In view of this, the government should take immediate steps for the appointment of the nominate members,” he said.

“I don’t know if the issue of reconstitution of university EC was raised in the meeting. It has been long pending in the varsities. It is high time that the State government reconstitutes ECs of varsities on war footing without any further delay and in the best interest of higher education,” said a senior official.