Information received under the Right To Information Act from the University of Mumbai regarding the former senate has revealed that nearly one third of its members especially those who were nominated by the chancellor and vice-chancellor never attended a single session. The issue of nominated members not attending is important as the chancellor will be nominating people for a period of one year to take care of university issues till elections are held next year.
According to RTI activist Anil Galgali who sought the information out of the 101 senate members in the University of Mumbai, there were 21 nominated members of which two members each were from the Legislative Council and Assembly.
“The chancellor appoints two experts from different fields while the vice-chancellor nominates three members from the various institutions affiliated to the university and two members from the unions. A representative of the Zilla Parishad and municipal corporation is also nominated,” said Mr Galgali.
He further said that as per the attendance record of the senate meetings that were held during the period of 2010 to 2015 none of the above mentioned nominated senate members was present in the senate meetings. Some of the nominated members who did not attend included Jitendra Awhad, Prakash Binsale, Pravin Darekar, Raj Shroff, Charan Singh Sapra and Sriram Dandekar.
Pointing to the government’s decision to have nominated members to oversee the running of the university till the elections are held next year, Mr Galgali said that in such a scenario the university would be in shambles as none of the previously nominated members attended the meetings. “If the nominated members will be like those in the past the university will collapse and all the stake-holders will be affected,” said Mr Galgali.
Apart from this the RTI shows that three nominated office bearers from the higher and technical education and medical education department were also absent in the meetings that were held in the period between 2013-2015. The university conducted on an average two senate meetings in a year with one being held to discuss the budget and the second one to discuss the perspective plan both crucial meetings for the day-to-day running and future growth of the university.
