West Bengal Universities and Colleges Administration and Regulation Amendment Bill, 2026 has been passed in a special daylong session in the state Assembly. It seeks to bring about a new system of transfer of teachers and non-teaching staff.
It will deeply impact the environment of universities. At a first glance, it is the new government ‘s first step to improve higher education.
It is admirable on principle. No one ought to have any quarrel with the intent to transfer experienced teachers to a fledgling university and raise its academic standards.
Yet it looks like something which falls short of academic admiration in perception. Teachers are inducted into a university according to its needs of teaching .
It is a part of the university’s autonomy. To all intents and purposes that autonomy is junked.
The Bill was introduced with an unusual alacrity. Its timing coincides with the unsavoury nocturnal face off between two groups of students, one belonging to the Left students unions and the other to Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in Jadavpur University campus with the local BJP legislator, Sarbori Mukherjee bulldozing her way in.
She threatened the other group of students with fire consequences. A procession led by chief minister Subhendu Adhikari held a rally near one of the gates of JU soon thereafter.
Casting off the cloak of an unbiased stand, chief minister Adhikari warned of strict action against those shouting “anti national slogans”. He further said that the government will speak the language of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and not Mahatma Gandhi.
What has slipped his mind that Bose came into prominence as a student leader post his face off with a Presidency College teacher, E F Oaten after he reportedly made some racist remarks against Indians. Now the chief minister seeks to speak the language of a student leader against some students.
Moreover, Bose abhorred communal politics. He had spurned an offer of alliance from Syama Prasad Mookherjee who was then a leading light of Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal and who later founded Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the predecessor of BJP to which Adhikari belongs.
Reverting to the present, the new tool for transfer of teaching and non-teaching staff of universities of the state raises some questions. The first being “who identifies the experienced teachers who are to be transferred” to other universities?
Will the academics who think aloud against the state government will be the first to pack their bags? Will dissent against the opinion of the powers that be the principal criterion of academic transfer?
Transfers cannot be the sole yard stick to improve the academic standards of a new university. It needs to have its area of emphasis and the freedom to develop its own resources and it’s areas of competence.
These quarries are yet to be replied. But they should have been addressed to shed any shred of bias on the part of the state government.
Several teachers of Jadavpur University teachers past and present walked into the campus exhibiting their solidarity with students not upholding the saffron ideology. Political graffiti on inside the campus were whitewashed only to be written upon again.
It was against this backdrop that the Bill was placed and passed. Small wonder, a considerable section of the teaching community in the state have smelt the rat.
These academics are apprehensive that the system of transfer threatens the growth of excellence of a university. Its reputation did not grow by fits and starts.
After all, it takes decades nay more for an acorn to grow into a big tree. Transfers especially motivated ones threaten to deplete the influence and destabilise the standard of a university like the one recently in the news for the wrong reason-Jadavpur University.
Moreover, it triggers uncertainty among the teachers and students. They remain fearful of being targeted of being critical of the government.
The core competence of the universities of the state especially where teachers have built reputation of departments have not been considered. The first BJP state government in West Bengal clearly had other ideas.
It has its work cut out for it with a brute majority in the Assembly where the Opposition is a divided house. The upshot being the welfare of students is being considered not of any account.
The new transfer policy would certainly adversely affect the diversity of opinion,while it remains to be seen how much it uplifts academic standards. The apprehension that space for unfettered intellectual engagement, curiosity and discussion being cut down cannot be ruled out.
