Teachers, students of NEHU, Shillong seek Vice-Chancellor's removal

Teachers, non-teaching staff and students of North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong staged a protest on Wednesday seeking an investigation against Vice-Chancellor SK Srivastava for allegedly violating university norms during his five-year tenure, which will end on September 23. NEHU is a central university with campuses in Shillong and Tura in Meghalaya.

They also demanded the removal of Srivastava stating that extension of his term would further deteriorate the standard of the university.

"The vice-chancellor is violating the university norms by not convening mandatory annual university court meetings and without discussing annual reports, annual accounts and audit reports in due time. He even went to the extent of presenting various mandatory reports to the Parliament without following any due process. These acts standing in total contravention of NEHU rules have serious academic, administrative and financial ramifications- much to the detriment of University’s ecosystem, as each of such highly anomalous, prima facie illegal and irregular acts require that he be removed immediately and not allowed to continue and any extension beyond his tenure be granted," said a statement issued by the Joint Action Committee, forum of North-Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA); North-Eastern Hill University Non-Teaching Staff Association (NEHUNTSA) and North-Eastern Hill University Students’ Union(NEHUSU), Shillong and Tura.

The committee urged the Centre to take immediate action against the alleged violations of norms by the VC in the past five years. "With an otherwise highly performing faculty but with poor administrative management from the top, the rank of NEHU has gone down in all recent assessments," the statement said.

Srivastava could not be contacted for a comment regarding the allegations.