Kolkata, Sept. 16 -- The West Bengal government has nominated governing body presidents at 171 more government-aided colleges, with a majority of the appointees being BJP leaders, including former legislators and party functionaries.

The appointments, notified by the Higher Education Department on Tuesday under the West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) Act, 2017, come after BJP MPs and MLAs were appointed to head governing bodies of 247 colleges in August.

The latest appointees include BJP leader Priyanka Tibrewal at Surendranath College for Women, Shashi Agnihotri at Basanti Devi College, former MP Locket Chatterjee at Sammilani Mahavidyalaya and Purulia MP Jyotirmoy Singh Mahato at Balarampur College. The colleges are spread across Kolkata and several districts, including North and South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Nadia, Purulia, Bankura, Darjeeling, Cooch Behar, Howrah and Jalpaiguri.

The appointments replace administrators installed after governing bodies were dissolved following the change of government in May. New governing bodies will now be constituted. Higher Education Minister Jagannath Chattopadhyay said the government had adopted the "best possible method" to keep college campuses free of political activity. He said this could be achieved either by appointing non-political persons or by asking politically active appointees to ensure campuses remained free of politics.

On self-financed B.Ed colleges, Chattopadhyay said more than 250 of the 451 institutions served show-cause notices had not responded, which he said vindicated the department's inspection drive. Colleges failing to respond or meet stipulated conditions would not be allowed to admit students, while 179 institutions had been permitted to admit students after broadly meeting requirements, subject to rectifying deficiencies.

On Jadavpur University, he said it must decide whether it wanted to become a "centre of excellence" or a "centre of extremism", noting that while only a few hundred of its 14,000-15,000 students were involved in disruptive activities, the majority wanted to study.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.