MUMBAI :  A city-based environmentalist has moved Bombay High Court against the University of Mumbai and the office of the Chancellor, alleging that the newly appointed vice chancellor, Rajan Welukar, does not have the required academic qualifications, says a Hundastan Times report credited to Kiran Wadhwa.

The petitioner who has challenged the entire selection process, claims that Welukar, appointed a month ago by a search committee headed by Ashok Kolaskar,the vice-chancellor of Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, is a selection grade lecturer and not a professor, the minimum qualification required to be a VC, says the report.

Moreover, the activist alleges that Welukar is not an approved an undergraduate or postgraduate teacher with 15 years of experience in any university. “He was the vice-chancellor of YCMOU but he was not on a substantive post of a professor or a principal but merely a lecturer,” says the newspaper report quoting the petition.

“After the completion of his tenure, he joined back as a selection grade lecturer. He is not even an approved UG/PG teacher with 15 years experience in any university, nor a Ph.D guide, nor has the required number of research publications in peer reviewed journals…moreover, he has not executed any of his own research projects in his field of specialisation,’’ the
petition adds.

The petitioner has alleged that the state government has even violated the guidelines drawn up by the University Grants Commission, the primary body forvarsities. “The vice-chancellor to be appointed should be a distinguished academician, with a minimum of ten years of experience as professor in a university system or 10 years of experience in an equivalent position in
a reputed research and/or academic administrative organisation,” said the petitioner.