JOIN USWhen Governor H R Bhardwaj, who is the Chancellor of the varsity, left the place after giving away gold medals and prizes to winners around 1.30 pm, Vice-Chancellor N Prabhu Dev followed to escort him.
Moments later, Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily too left the venue. Dev again had to escort him till the entrance of the Jnana Jyothi Auditorium in the Central College campus where the ceremony was held.
Angry PhD awardees, who were yet to receive the certificates, raised a hue and cry when the V-C came back to hand over the degrees.
As Registrar (Administration) R M Ranganath read out the names of awardees, one of them protested: “We should have been given the degrees by the Governor or the chief guest. It’s insulting to us that our hard work is not being properly recognised,” he said.
He was soon joined by others, many of them middle-aged persons who were accompanied by family members. Suddenly, a few of them reached the dais and began arguing with BU officials who tried to pacify them.
Expressing their inability to keep the dignitaries for a longer time, the officials told the students that the Governor left as he could not afford to stand for hours handing over degrees.
The agitators, however, were not convinced. Then, Ranganath tried to calm them. When this also did not work, the Vice-Chancellor took the microphone.
“Please go back to your seats and wait. We will call you,” he appealed to them.
Meanwhile, police intervened and urged the awardees to move out from the dais. After a brief bout of annoyance, the agitators did make a retreat.
Acharya skips function
Minister for Higher Education V S Acharya gave the convocation a miss. Despite being the Pro-Chancellor of the university, Acharya did not turn up for the convocation.
His absence was the topic of much debate. His staying away from the convocation is largely attributed to his differences with the Vice-Chancellor over bifurcation of the university.
Ever since Acharya threw his weight behind splitting BU into two universities, he and the V-C have not been seeing eye to eye.
While the Minister has skipped a couple of BU functions, the V-C too remained absent from a recent meeting of the Karnataka State Council for Higher Education.