Club membership, business class travel among demands by new UVCE director

Bengaluru: A membership in the elite Century Club, business class flights and a housemaid... these are some of the ‘demands’ placed by the new director of the iconic University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), according to documents available with DH. 

D Manjunath, a professor of electrical engineering at IIT Bombay, was appointed as the first director of UVCE in March 2023. However, he has not taken charge yet. The professor had informed the UVCE Board of Governors (BoG) earlier that he would report to duty in January this year. This has been pushed to February third week. 

Prof Manjunath did not respond to calls or messages for a comment.

DH has accessed Prof Manjunath’s communication with the BoG, according to which he has sought some additions to his salary package.

Apart from club membership and business class travel to attend national and international conferences, the new appointee has sought allowance for “personal devices” (gadgets) and discretionary spending on “unexpected needs”. 

“Please create the package and communicate the details. I have a couple of offer letters from non-Central government institutions and they all spell out all of these in full detail. Also, if some of them can’t be done immediately, please provide me with some timeline. If you think any of the preceding can’t be provided, please let me know,” the professor wrote.

Some of these demands have irked a section of UVCE faculty and the higher education department. However, BoG chairperson B Muthuraman said the UVCE will have to “match what (Manjunath) is getting currently”. 

Speaking to DH, Muthuraman said: “The demands are not unusual. Given that he is of high calibre, they can be met if he joins. Even the BoG has cleared the demands.”

Higher Education Minister Dr MC Sudhakar, however, said there can’t be any further waiting. “We are not aware of his demands, but we know that he hasn’t joined yet. No further waiting. I have asked the BoG for a report,” he told DH. 

Retired UVCE principal K Ranga lamented that the director’s post has been lying vacant for nearly a year. “This is for the first time in the history of Karnataka’s higher education that a post is kept open waiting for a particular person,” he said. “By doing this, they are insulting Sir M Visvesvaraya.”