Speculation is rife within academics in Mumbai on why enactment of the Maharashtra Public Universities Bill, 2015, which replaces the two-decade-old Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994, has been postponed to the state legislative assembly’s budget session which begins in March. Particularly since in anticipation of the enactment of the Bill, the state’s 11 government-funded universities have dissolved their administrative councils, senates, academic councils, board of studies etc. Consequently, the administration and management of the 11 non-agriculture universities of the country’s most industrialised state (pop. 112 million) — Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Jalgaon, SNDT, Nanded, Kolhapur, Sholapur, Amravati and Gondvana at Gadchiroli — and their 3,700 affiliated colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 3.5 million students, has been severely disrupted.

Opposition party spokespersons say the haste displayed in suspending the administrative councils of the state’s 11 universities is politically motivated. According to Rajesh Tope, former minister for higher and technical education in the Congress-NCP government which was routed in the state’s assembly election of 2014, the members of the suspended councils were academics of merit. “Normally when new legislation is delayed, the term of such academic and administrative councils is simply extended until new members are elected under the new Act. But the BJP/Shiv Sena government has hastily dissolved senates and councils even before passage of the Bill. This has been done to bring the universities under direct control of the state government, so that hand-picked and selected saffron party sympathisers are placed in key positions to implement the spirit of the Bill which will tighten government control of Maharashtra’s universities,” says Tope.

The proposed Bill also invests sweeping powers in (government-appointed) vice chancellors who will chair the academic and administrative councils and will be the final authority to grant affiliation to colleges. Another recommendation is to replace elected university senates with a Society Partnership Council, whose members will be recommended by vice chancellors.

“Maharashtra’s universities have become hotbeds of ideological politics, with political parties intent on infiltrating their parochial agendas into them. The wide powers invested by the Bill in politically appointed vice chancellors will plunge academic standards to new depths,” warns Dr. G. Ramachandram, professor of political science and former principal of KES Shroff College, Mumbai.

According to critics of the state government, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological mentor, has already made inroads into Maharashtra’s premier Mumbai University with the appointment of RSS sympathiser Sanjay Deshmukh as its vice chancellor last July. According to them, Deshmukh was director of research at the RSS-backed Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini (RMP) in Mumbai.

“Even as academics are discussing ways and means to upgrade our varsities to compete with international varsities, politicians and bureaucrats are hell-bent on controlling and commanding them. Unless academics speak up for autonomy, discussions and debates about competing with the world’s best universities are futile,” says Dr. Murlidhar Kurhade, principal of DTSS College, Mumbai and president of the Association of Principals of Non-Government Colleges.

It’s not as if high quality blueprints for upgrading Maharashtra’s universities whose certificates are being devalued with every passing day, don’t exist. The previous Congress regime had set up a committee to prepare a draft of the Maharashtra Public Universities Bill in 2011 under the chairmanship of former University Grants Commission chairman, Arun Nigavekar. Two other committees headed by Dr. Anil Kakodkar and Prof. Ram Takwale were also consulted.

But the reports of these committees headed by nationally respected academics seem to have disappeared from the radar of the BJP-Shiv Sena state government which swept to power in India’s most industrially advanced state in 2014.

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)