SNDP chief hits out against open varsity VC appointment

Thiruvananthapuram: SNDP Yogam General Secretary, Vellappally Natesan on Friday expressed his strong disapproval of the appointment of the first vice chancellor of the newly formed Sree Narayana Guru Open University.

In a strong condemnation of the decision by Pinarayi Vijayan's left front government, he said that the hopes of Sree Naryana Guru's followers were dashed by a Vice Chancellor being appointed from the Muslim community rather than from Sree Narayana's followers.

Natesan expressed his ire while speaking to the media after he was re-elected as the general secretary of the powerful Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam.

The first VC whose name was approved by the government the other day is Dr PM Mubarak Pasha, who most recently has been a faculty in the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Natesan said that the community had hoped to see one among them being made the VC when there was no dearth of qualified hands in their community.

Natesan's criticism marks a departure from the smooth relations between the SNDP Yogam and the Left Democratic Front government in recent times. Although this is a one-off decision of the kind, Vellappally's following is likely to have taken it to have a symbolic significance, the university being named after the Guru and seen as a fitting memorial to the iconic reformer.

However, the university is not one established for Sree Narayana studies, but the first open university in Kerala, that is slated to take over the distance education stream entirely from other universities in the state, and whose headquarters is Kollam, the second southernmost district of the state.

However, the SNDP leader looked peeved by the decision which he attributed to the insistence of higher education minister Dr KT Jaleel in favour of his community's candidate.

"The Left government has let down the believers of our community by not appointing someone who is well versed with the ideology of the Sree Narayana Guru. This was not expected from the Left, and this can be seen as an act of continuing the age old practice of keeping out the backward community from the crucial posts. Do not know why the State Higher Education Minister K.T. Jaleel did not appoint one of our people to the post," said Natesan.