Maharashtra University Act to empower bureaucrats

The final draft of the Maharashtra University Act has been prepared with some major changes that would invest more powers in the hands of the chancellor and vice-chancellor, thus increasing bureaucracy. This, according to some academicians, will bring an end to the democratic way of functioning of the universities and the draft is more suited to foreign universities. Former senate members have said that the composition of the senate as per the draft will throttle debates as the number of elected representatives has been reduced to 16 as compared to the previous number of 58.

The state government had initiated the process of preparing the new draft of the Maharashtra Universities Act in 2011 by appointing two committees — the Dr Anil Kakodkar and Dr Arun Nigvekar committees. Both the committees submitted their drafts after which a review committee under Dr Kumud Bansal was formed. This review committee collated and harmonised the reports and identified actionable points and submitted the final draft to the state government. The draft will now be put forward to the State Council for Higher Education after which it will be placed before the cabinet for approval and enactment during the Winter Session.

As per the draft that has effected major changes over the Maharashtra Universities Act of 1994, a university would not have the post of pro-vice-chancellor or director of Board of University and College Development (BCUD). While the pro-vice-chancellor’s post is replaced by provost, the duties of the BCUD director will be taken care by four deans who will be appointed by the university on a full time basis. The deans will also replace the former six deans of the arts, science, commerce, technology, law and fine arts faculty and the former faculties have been merged under four heads.

Apart from this, the post of controller of examination has been replaced by director of examination and additional boards have been proposed to cover information technology, life long learning among others.

However, the worst affected authorities are the senate, academic and management councils. These three authorities that have been the mainstay of every university have been halved and the new bodies will consist of a majority of appointed members over the elected members.

While previously the senate had 105 members, as per the new draft the number will be reduced to 52 out of which there will be only 16 elected members from the teachers and graduate constituency, principals and managements. Under the old Act, 58 members were elected to the senate and the remaining were nominated or were ex-officio members.

Similarly, in the academic council, which had approximately 110 members as per the old Act, the draft has proposed having only 26 members. The management council that had 22 members previously will now have 20 members.

Criticising the draft, a senior academician from the University of Mumbai said that if the draft was enacted it would mean more bureaucracy and less democracy. “While the draft is almost similar to the Central Universities Act, the motive seems to be to pave the way for foreign universities that will set base in India after the World Trade Organisation agreement is signed in Nigeria in December,” said the academician.

A former senate member said that the draft was undemocratic and looked to hand over authority in the hands of a few. “If the draft is enacted, it will ring an end to debates and discussions on issues and will lead to pro-authority decisions getting passed without a whimper. The elected representatives to the senate were the ones who acted as watchdogs on the university authorities and reined them in from taking rash decisions. But now there will be no control as the elected members will be a minority, thus making it easy for the authorities to run the university on a whim,” said the former senate member.