UGC Draft Regulations And AMU

Will the Draft UGC Regulations 2025 undermine our universities?
Unlikely, notes Professor Mohammad Sajjad, citing how AMU has utilised its exceptional autonomy.

In the latest Draft UGC Regulations 2025 (external link), some academics have looked into the draft to be encroaching upon university autonomy.

Why cannot we trust (and leave it to) the universities reassuring ourselves that they would prepare a good panel of VCs, they ask.

To examine this proposition, let us look at the Aligarh Muslim University.

AMU has exceptional autonomy in preparing a panel of its VCs. The panel is formed by the AMU's executive council, heavily dominated by AMU internal teachers.

AMU has thus far been enjoying absolute autonomy in empanelling its VC, regardless of whether the successive ruling dispensations in New Delhi were alleged to be 'appeasing' or 'tormenting' the Muslim minorities.

AMU neither issues any advertisement to invite applications nor does it have interactive meetings with the applicants for vice chancellorship.

In 2023, the panel had only internal teachers; none from outside.

In October 2023, a panel was formed based on an internally circulated notification, allowing only six days to apply for being empanelled.

Many professors seeking inclusion in the panel lack quality research publications. From 2017 to 2023, AMU had a VC from the internal faculty, deeply rooted in the local community for generations.

Such situations often lead to the VC being biased, held hostage, or both by local cliques.

Local VCs are unlikely to act against these cliques as they continue to live among them even after completing tenure.

Unlike other Central Universities, AMU enjoys absolute autonomy in forming its VC panel, dissimilar to the Search-cum-Selection Committees used elsewhere, which exclude individuals associated with the respective universities.

AMU has selectively amended its statutes and ordinances to align with UGC regulations but violated them by not raising the pro-vice chancellor's upper age limit to 70 years.

This selectivity has no connection to the so-called 'Muslim-ness' the university claims to safeguard.

The proposed UGC Regulations 2025 says that the respective universities shall have to amend their statutes within six months of the final notification of the UGC Regulations 2025.

What if a university defies and flouts the regulations and doesn't amend the statutes accordingly?

The proposed UGC Regulations 2025 propose to penalise the institution, not the concerned erring officials.

There are many instances wherein the outgoing AMU VCs left office without drafting a panel to choose his successor.

This should be considered a dereliction of duty, and penalising provisions should be established for such failures or lapses in administrative responsibilities.

Inside AMU, powerful clout-wielding teachers, on their WhatsApp groups, have shared their grudges against the proposed UGC Regulations 2025.

They say the regulations are anti-academic in the sense that the ruling dispensations will have VCs of their choice.

The truth is the new regulations have actually brought back what it was until a few years ago, so far as eligibility-criteria for choosing/empanelling the VCs are concerned!

And even in that arguably 'good old era', many VCs were found to be status quoists, and pliant to the dispensation.

This is amply demonstrated by many studies including Rudolph and Rudolph's 1987 book, In Pursuit of Lakshmi and Amrik Singh's 1984 book, Asking for Trouble.

Such critics of the proposed UGC Regulations 2025 inside AMU are those who don't have any remorse in stuffing the panel only with internals, and that too without any advertisement inviting applications.

In fact, such cases at AMU in the panels of 2017 and 2023 would demonstrate that AMU has inbreeding not only in enrolment of students and recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff but also in panels to select the VCs.

This inbreeding up to the panel of the VCs has got its own counterproductive implications.

AMU has been violating the regulations and having its own teachers as ad hoc statutory officers and other such administrators at the university for incredibly longer periods.

Most of the high administrative officers at AMU have been serving continuously since the tenures of many VCs.

Eight teachers are serving as OSDs as recently confessed by the AMU in an RTI. (external link)

VCs don't have the will to replace these teacher-administrators.

Have these perennially administering academics got respectable and quality research publications to their credit?

Do they engage their classes? Or, in their stead, some guest/contractual teachers engage their classes?

A most sacred duty of a university is to conduct examinations in a fair manner. In recent years, too many instances of badly compromised examination (external link) systems have come to light, exposed by insiders on the social media with evidence.

Yet, the Controller of Exams & Admissions (CoE &A) has been continuing (on ad hoc basis, which is a gross violation of UGC Regulations) for several years.

Clout-wielding powerful teachers can delay the selection committees meant for promoting more accomplished academics and by default they grab positions of chairman, at least in certain instances.

The VCs having practically become subservient to such cliques show their helplessness.

This helplessness is inevitable also because the VCs owe their empanelment to such cliques dominating the Executive Council, who prepare the panel quite autonomously.

The proposed UGC Regulations 2025 provides that the 'teachers may be appointed against the vacant sanctioned faculty positions on a contract basis for a maximum period of six months, only when it is essential'.

This restriction is a relatively better provision from the existing one.

The experiences in recent years show that many universities including AMU have been shying away from holding regular selection committees to fill vacant positions; they subject contractual/guest teachers to various kinds of exploitation for many years, killing their research/creative/productive potential.

This has practically become a tool to drive out the meritorious ones.

Professor Mohammad Sajjad teaches modern and contemporary history at the Aligarh Muslim University.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com