Deadline makes colleges scurry for right heads

Colleges and universities in the state, staring at a March 31 deadline to fill up posts of teachers and principals, are in a fix over finding the right candidates.

There are as many as 215 posts of principals lying vacant in private unaided colleges that run commerce, arts, science, education and law courses.

State director of higher education RV Kirdak said that the decision to fill all the principals’ posts by March 31, as directed by the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court is binding on every college.

“If the colleges do not fill the vacant posts by the stipulated deadline, then appropriate action will be taken against them, both by the respective universities to which they are affiliated as well as the government,” he said.

University of Pune (UoP) vice-chancellor Narendra Jadhav said, “Efforts have already been initiated by the university to compel the colleges to fill up the vacant posts. But colleges are finding it difficult to find the right candidates.”

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court had recently directed the universities to prepare a databank of all the lecturers/professors eligible for the appointment to the posts of principals. The list will have to be circulated to all the colleges (aided and non-aided) on or before January 31, 2009, the court had directed.

UoP officials said that their list with inputs from the affiliated colleges, located in the three districts of Pune, Nashik and Ahmednagar is ready.   

“The university has a list of over 280 eligible candidates for the principals’ posts from 33 colleges,” the official said.

UoP’s Board of Colleges and University Development (BCUD) director Pandit Vidyasagar said that of the 530 affiliated colleges, only 225 colleges have regular principals.

The Shivaji University (SU) with its jurisdiction in the three districts of Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara, has 235 colleges. Of these, 97 do not have full-time principals and forty one colleges have appointed principals on an ad hoc basis.

The High Court judgment
Over 1,000 government-run, aided and unaided private colleges sans full-time principals and teachers across Maharashtra could face de-affiliation or penal action, besides being unable to admit students in 2009-10 academic year, if they fail to fill up vacancies of principals and teachers as per a landmark judgment delivered on December 3, 2008, by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.

The court has given such colleges time until March 31, 2009 to appoint full-time principals and teachers. Deadline is extendable until May 15, if the process of recruitment is genuinely on.

In the eventuality of their failure to abide by the orders, the colleges could lose their affiliation by the end of the 2010-11 session. Thousands of vacancies could open up in the next three months in the colleges, mostly run by people with political lineages, over the next few months.

The bench of Justice BH Marlapalle and Justice Ambadas Joshi, who treated a news report in local newspaper on the government institutions running without full-time principals or directors for years as a public interest litigation suo motto, expanded the scope of the litigation to the entire state and all universities later.

The posts to be filled up through promotions have time of three months, while the posts that needed nominations had to be filled up within six months period.