PATNA: Bihar’s Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University (TMBU) has filed a police complaint against a student who threw ink at pro-vice-chancellor Ramesh Kumar at his residence on Sunday. The ink attack comes against the backdrop of demands by students that a full-time vice-chancellor is appointed for the university.
“He went all the way to the residence of the Pro-VC, that too on a holiday… The fact is that despite some problems, TMBU session is relatively better compared to many other state universities,” said TMBU registrar Dr Niranjan Prasad Yadav.
A senior university official said the students have been protesting for a week demanding the appointment of a permanent V-C.
BR Ambedkar Bihar University (Muzaffarpur) vice chancellor Hanuman Prasad Pandey has been holding additional charge of TMBU since September 24 last year. Officials said he hadn’t delegated responsibilities to the Pro-VC to carry out routine functioning in his absence and hadn’t been able to visit the university even once this year.
Pro-VC Ramesh Kumar could not be contacted for his comments.
“The university officials take the files to the Muzaffarpur, but the absence of the top authority is affecting the day-to-day functioning, especially the signing of degrees. For all the previous VCs, signing of degrees was always the top priority, but for the last couple of years, things have gone awry because the VCs were mostly in-charge for short periods,” he added.
On July 15, the students demanded their degrees and entered into heated arguments with the controller of examination Arun Kumar Singh.
“Since July 18, the students have been protesting and have locked down the university. They want permanent VC here. How can we assure that? It is for the Raj Bhawan and the government to work on,” said the registrar, admitting that the authorities were trying to calm things down at their level by trying to convince them that their problems will be addressed.
Raj Bhawan had also called a meeting of registrars and exam controllers for two days to address the issues of state universities, the most important being streamlining of the exams and the academic session. The other important agenda is to review the mounting court cases, mostly related to payment of retrial benefits, promotion delays and other issues. While the July 25 meeting has been rescheduled for July 27, the second meeting will take place as per schedule on Tuesday, which will be attended by seven universities, including TMBU.
Most universities in Bihar face the problem of delayed academic sessions, something that education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary has also been proactively working on.
Last month, a group of students who have come to meet the minister lost their cool due to the excruciatingly late academic sessions in most universities, prompting the minister to intervene.
“I had requested you to take special initiative in this regard and you had also issued necessary directive to the VCs in this regard. After the pandemic, the situation has also become normal now. But the desired improvement is yet to happen,” he said in one communication, highlighting that the situation at Magadh University (Bodh Gaya) and JPU University (Chapra) was extremely worrisome.
