By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Nov 29: The NEHUTA on Friday threw down the gauntlet to North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) Vice Chancellor Prof Prabha Shankar Shukla, asking him to substantiate the charges he levelled against the association, thereby tarnishing its image.
In a rebuttal submitted to Secretary of Higher Education, Government of India, NEHUTA president Lakhon Kma said Prof Shukla is trying to blame the current crisis in NEHU on NEHUTA, NEHUSU, KSU, state government and state police instead of blaming himself.
NEHUTA condemned the VC’s “irresponsible” statements allegedly made with a malafide intention to defame the association, all other stakeholders of NEHU and entire Meghalaya.
Prof Kma said it is unacceptable that the VC is trying to blame the teachers of NEHU and therefore, NEHUTA is forced to question his academic credentials.
“It is pertinent to state how Prof Shukla was appointed as the Vice Chancellor by keeping aside much more qualified shortlisted candidates. He was a pure political appointee. As he implored upon ongoing performance of every faculty, it is indeed necessary to appraise in the public domain what are his academic and research contributions, publications and other such research related works that are noteworthy,” the NEHUTA president said.
He alleged Prof Shukla keeps undermining and decrying the contributions of NEHU faculty members.
“On the one hand, he claimed credit for QS ranking and on the other, he keeps downgrading faculty research and contributions. Indeed, in more than three years of his tenure as a VC, he has neither invested any resource to promote academics and research nor brought any funds except paying lip service to research and academics in the university,” Kma said.
He also said that Prof Shukla has let down every section of the university community and every aspect of its academic, research, financial and administrative responsibilities, which led to a huge mess for which students, teachers and non-teaching staff and people of the state had to resort to protests and agitations declaring him as “persona non grata”.
According to Kma, it is because of the VC’s non-understanding and mishandling of the situation as reflected in his “careless” statements of blaming faculty members and others for NEHU’s slide in NIRF ranking and his non-response to the demands of students for the immediate removal of erring officials like Registrar and Deputy Registrar that the hunger strike was organised. He said the VC alone is responsible for the consequential deleterious effect on the health of the protesting students.
Kma said NEHU’s falling NIRF ranking is due to gross mismanagement of the varsity’s affairs at every level by Prof Shukla.
“His entire tenure so far is marked by the propagation of mediocracy and murder of meritocracy. He rewarded an underperforming person a second term as Dean of School of Social Sciences denying much more productive 20 odd professors down the line waiting for their turn to come by the rule of seniority by rotation,” Kma said.
Meanwhile, the NEHUTA president observed that the “colourful” letterhead on which Prof Shukla wrote the letter addressed to the Principal Secretary of Higher Education, Government of India, is not signed by him, but his signature was copy-pasted by somebody else.
Kma said this is the level of the VC’s willful omission and commission with which he goes to public and authorities to level unsubstantiated charges, casting biased aspersions on individual faculty members. “Secondly, no faculty individually operated in the protest and agitation as their participation in the role of members and office bearers of Teachers’ Association called NEHUTA is a matter of their right and dignity, especially when a VC like Prof Shukla fails to address a single issue,” Kma said.
Moreover, he said Prof Shukla targeting individual teachers and office bearers of the teachers’ association only goes onto show his mental and psychological disconnect from NEHU as he failed to gauge how students protested against his utter inability to respond to any and all of the issues by holding “satyagraha” before his office in the form of hunger strike for 16 continuous days.
Stating that it is most disparaging on Prof Shukla’s part to term the ‘hunger strike’ as a ‘drama’ in his write-up, Kma said the VC is probably not at all aware why the students protested after submitting memorandums and letters from all stakeholder associations including teachers’ raising the demand for the removal of unqualified and incompetent ones from important posts of the university.
Kma said NEHU had its gold standard during the regimes of VCs like Prof Barrister Pakem, Prof Mrinal Miri, Prof Pramod Tandon and Prof AN Rai who all built up not only infrastructure but promoted academics and research at national and international levels with everyone’s support.
“This is how NEHU created a very successful academic and infrastructural behemoth, which was slowly brought down during the interregnum of absence of regular VC and then by Prof Sri Krishna Srivastava. In this steady decline of last 12 years or so, a political appointee like Prof Shukla without much academic credentials and administrative experience to his side miserably failed to create any growth in academic and infrastructure,” the NEHUTA president said.
“His lack of understanding of NEHU Act, Statutes and Ordinances compelled him to spread misinformation and lies which we have seen for the last three years. How he spreads lies is amply shown by last minute action of conduct of Executive Council in absentia to name some faculty as Pro-VCs which have been demanded by the university community for last three years,” Kma said.
He alleged that Prof Shukla failed to assess the gravity of the situation that led to the students resorting to hunger strike and, in the process, the entire NEHU fraternity lost trust in his ability to continue as the VC of NEHU.
He said Prof Shukla jumped the gun by expressing his “sweet will” to return in the middle of a due process of inquiry when the committee appointed by the Ministry of Education is seized with issues of NEHU and going to submit its report.
“While we are all eagerly waiting for the report, his proclamation that he would like to join NEHU on 2/12/2024 while his conduct as a VC is under investigation by the Inquiry Committee shows that Prof. Shukla ridiculed the Ministry and perhaps, thinks that he is above it,” Kma said.
“Moreover, as a habitual liar, he tried to mislead everyone by falsely claiming that the NEHU Inquiry Report was prepared under the Chairmanship of Prof. Lakhon Kma to tarnish the reputation of NEHUTA and its members and the Acting VC Prof N Saha,” Kma further stated.
He added that Prof Shukla came out with such an unsubstantiated abrasive public statement to further create rift, tension and chaos in the university so that he can sadistically enjoy the pain that he inflicted on the university community from a distance.
“Finding no way to save his skin, he is creating such baseless and unfounded allegations to sensationalize and defend his own indefensible omissions and commissions, all catalogued and put on record by various stakeholders,” Kma said.