The Aligarh Muslim University Court, its supreme governing body in its meeting on Saturday, chose the economist Dr Abusaleh Shariff, biomedical scientist Dr Shahid Jameel and surgeon Dr Tariq Mansoor out of a panel of five names.
The three names will be sent to the President, the Visitor of the university, who will appoint the vice chancellor on the advice of the HRD ministry.
Photo: Indian ExpressThe university has this time made sure that the three names being sent to the Visitor are of academicians and in accordance with the UGC Regulations 2010. The case of AMU’s incumbent VC Zameeruddin Shah’s appointment is being heard in the Supreme Court because Shah does not have requisite academic qualifications.
Executive director and chief scholar, US-India Policy Institute, USA, Dr Shariff has over 30 years of research and teaching experience at senior and management levels. He was the Member-Secretary of Sachar Committee, commissioned in 2005 by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005 to prepare a report on the latest social, economic, and educational conditions of the Muslim community of India. Also having worked closely with the government, Dr Shariff has given lectures on invitations in universities such as Oxford and Australian National University.
Dr Jameel, on the other hand, is one of India’s leading biomedical research scientists, who has also been active in science policy and administration for over two decades. Member of prestigious science academies, he is also the recipient of BM Birla Science Prize in Biology and widely acclaimed Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Medical Sciences.
Dr Tariq Mansoor is the principal of AMU’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College since 2013. Prior to that, he was a professor of surgery at Aligarh Muslim University for over 10 years.
Although, the university has complied with the UGC Regulations as far as the qualifications of the candidates are concerned, the process it has adopted is not in line with the Regulations. Some are already casting aspersions about the panel’s validity because it violates the Regulations in both letter and spirit.
The Regulations say that a search committee whose members are not connected with the university in any manner should shortlist three names for VC. However, the three names that the university will send to the Visitor have been selected by university’s court and executive council that have a large number of university teachers.
