Anna University VC search committee to be rejigged by Nov 15

Chennai: Come November, a

search committee

will be constituted to find a vice-chancellor for Anna University, which has been functioning without one for 17 months now. After the dissolution of the previous search committee tasked with naming a

VC

, a new committee will be in place by November 15, according to senior officials in the education department.

The search committee which will have three nominees – from the state government, university syndicate and the governor of the state – will be reconstituted for a third time to fill the post, which has been vacant since May 2016.

“The state government’s appointee for the search committee will be named in the coming days. The syndicate nominee will follow,” said an official, adding that the governor’s choice will take another two weeks to be finalised.

“We are hoping to expedite the process as much as possible, so that the committee can begin its work,” said the official, speaking to TOI.

On October 14 this year, the previous committee’s four-month tenure came to a fruitless end, following a case lodged by SFI (Students Federation of India) to remove one of the nominees – K Anantha Padmanabhan, who was named by the syndicate.

Following this, the chairman of the committee, former Chief Justice R M Lodha – who was appointed by former governor Vidyasagar Rao – also resigned from his post and the search committee was wound up without having named any candidate.

The first search committee, formed in December 2016 with Tamil Nadu Open University’s vice-chancellor M Baskaran as the chairman, was dismissed by Rao who rejected all the candidates put forth by it.