Vice chancellor of varsity founded by Gandhi resigns

This comes in the midst of his ongoing feud with the University Grants Commission, which had termed his selection illegal

Six months after his controversial appointment to the post, Rajendra Khimani on Sunday tendered his resignation as the vice chancellor of deemed university Gujarat Vidyapith founded by Mahatma Gandhi in Ahmedabad.

This comes in the midst of his ongoing feud with the University Grants Commission (UGC), which had termed his selection illegal, saying that procedure was not followed for his appointment and that vigilance inquiry against him was pending.

Khimani resigned in a letter to governor Acharya Devvrat. Khimani refused to comment and said that any communication in this regard would come from the governor, who was recently appointed chancellor. Devvrat replaced prominent Gandhian, renowned activist and founder of Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) Ela Bhatt days after she tendered her resignation in October. Bhatt passed away on November 2.

The appointment of Devvrat sparked controversy, prompting nine trustees of Vidyapith to resign in protest. They also, in an open letter, requested Devvrat not to accept the post as "it was (done) under crass political pressure" and "in total disregard of Gandhi’s values, methods and practices". The governor accepted the post on October 11 and since then has been frequenting the campus, holding meetings and undertaking cleanliness drives.

Earlier this month, in a meeting chaired by Devvrat, Vidyapith accepted the resignation of eight trustees and announced the names of four new trustees: Harshad Patel, the current vice-chancellor of Teachers University, DP Thaker, the former state chief information commissioner, Padma Bhushan Rajshree Birla, and Gafur Bilakhia, an industrialist from Vapi. Before V-C of Teachers' University, Harshad Patel was Gujarat media coordinator of BJP.

Khimani was first appointed as V-C in 2020 but his appointment was revoked after UGC's intervention. In June 2021, he was reappointed to the post following a recommendation of a search committee. However, one of the members, Navin Sheth, dissented citing the ongoing vigilance inquiry. However, his dissent note was ignored in Khimani's appointment.

Sheth, who represented UGC in the search committee, wrote to the Ministry of Education, New Delhi following which UGC set up an inquiry committee. In November 2021, UGC passed an order based on the committee's recommendation directing the chancellor to sack Khimani immediately in view of several procedural lapses.

"...there are procedural lapses in the appointment of Dr. Rajendra Khimani as Vice-Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith (Deemed to be University) and ii) the Fact Finding Committee of UGC constituted separately has found that Dr. Rajendra Khimani was also responsible for certain lapses in the administrative and financial functioning of the Gujarat Vidyapith as Registrar during the period from 01.04.2004 to 30.04.2019," UGC had stated in its minutes of the meeting uploaded on its website.

Following this order, Khimani moved the High Court against UGC, contending that it was never communicated to him or the varsity. On September 21, Gujarat high court passed an order directing the varsity to take "appropriate" action in eight weeks on UGC's decision to sack Khimani on several grounds including "financial irregularity" and "administrative lapses" in his appointment.