By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
The administration at Banaras Hindu University hid the letter from Ministry of Human Resources and Development for the advertisement of applications for the new vice-chancellor’s post, according to reports emerging from the University.
The issue links directly to the university’s current VC Prof GC Tripathi, who has been in news all the time for the various reasons.
On August 1, 2017, Department of Higher Education at MHRD issued a letter to the Registrar of BHU whose subject line was “Advertisement for the post of VC of Banaras Hindu University”.
The University’s registrar was asked to bring the bilingual advertisement of the VC’s post in Times of India (Northern and Western region), The Telegraph (Kolkata and Guwahati edition) and The Hindu (Chennai/Bengaluru, Hyderabad/Trivandrum editions, along with the University website.
But it seems that letter, which was issued from the desk of Surat Singh, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of India was purposefully hidden by the registrar.
Until September 12, no newspaper had carried the advertisement from the university, nor did the University carry the advertisement on their website.
In fact, the fact that there had been such an advertisement was revealed only after a person named Harikesh Bahadur submitted a complaint against the university administration on September 12 in Prime Minister’s office, Delhi.
Bahadur alleged that the registrar Neeraj Tripathi is deliberately holding the advertisement process so that new VC’s appointment can be delayed. In such circumstances, the administration will have to extend the GC Tripathi’s tenure further which ends in November.
Neeraj Tripathi was used to be VC Tripathi’s personal assistant until a few days back when he was appointed as the registrar of the university.
However, the university, obviously, denies the allegation that it deliberately held the letter. PRO Rajesh Singh told TwoCircles.net, “Every work goes through a specific official channel, we are bound to follow that channel. The delay is normal because of the channel we are following.”
“How can someone say that we are not doing works of MHRD? It is beyond my imagination,” added Singh.
The letter from MHRD does not mention the date or timeframe under which the advertisements must be made out to the newspapers. As per the university’s PRO, such liberty can be entertained because of the ‘official channel’.
Singh said, “Ministry did not ask us to publish the letter before any specific date. So we are working on it.”
Just after the news erupted on Tuesday, local newspapers carried the story today that university has started the VC’s appointment process. But even after Singh’s clarification, it leaves the question that how can a letter be idle for 42 days ‘stuck in an official channel’.