Last Updated on March 23, 2021 at 11:10 pm
As the news of Lieutenant Governor reducing the tenure of incumbent vice-chancellor of University of Jammu Prof Manoj Dhar from five years to three years made headlines, the varsity has again come into attention of the masses.
As per a report in The Typewriter the tenure of Prof Manoj Dhar was for five years which started from July 2018. Suddenly, it has been reduced to just three years and within some months he’ll be reaching the end of his new term. Sources said that the JU management had earlier worked intensely on the selection of Vice-Chancellor, but it was badly affected at that time by some political interference. Now, the council has to do the same before July this year.
An academic expert suspected that the reason behind this sudden reduction of tenure of the incumbent Vice-Chancellor could be because he failed to impress Raj Bhawan with his work. The expert said that vice-chancellors’ tenures vary from three to five years. Five-year terms for vice-chancellors gives them sufficient time to work on their policies and experiment to see how they work out. Academicians are of the opinion that a three-year term is not sufficient for a vice-chancellor to formulate and implement policies.
He said that it is very difficult to make an impact, administratively or academically, in this short period of three years. A five-year term is sufficient time for vice-chancellors to fully experiment with their ideas.
However many registrar had been changed during the tenure of Prof Manoj Dhar that had also gone against his management. While most of the government departments in J&K had already implemented bio-metric attendance system, Jammu University failed to implement the same.
He said that there are some important factors which must be looked into. Choosing the right person for the post of VC is very difficult. Universities use various policies to appoint VCs. Institutes use many factors to identify the right persons for key positions.
A senior professor of Jammu University told The Typewriter that the appointment of vice-chancellors is largely dependent on the head of states. In the case of Jammu University, there have been allegations that nepotism and favouritism played an important role in the appointment of Vice-Chancellor.
