Who Controls the State University? The Federal Battle Over Vice-Chancellors

A university can be created by a State legislature, funded largely by the State government, and still have its most important appointment shaped by institutions linked to the Union.

That is the puzzle at the heart of India’s Vice-Chancellor controversy.

The dispute is often presented as a political fight between Governors and Chief Ministers. But underneath it lies a more difficult institutional question: when a State creates a university under its own law, how far can a national regulator determine the rules by which that university chooses its academic leadership?

The answer matters because a Vice-Chancellor is not merely an administrative appointment. The VC sits at the centre of a university’s academic and institutional machinery — chairing key bodies, overseeing administration and representing the institution externally. Whoever shapes the appointment process therefore has influence over how the institution is governed.

This makes the battle over Vice-Chancellors something larger than a dispute over one office. It is a test of where national standard-setting ends and State institutional authority begins.

The university belongs to one legal system. Its standards belong to another.

State universities occupy an unusual position in India’s higher-education architecture.

They are established through State legislation, so their statutes, administrative structures and appointment procedures are substantially shaped by State law.

At the same time, higher education is not insulated from national regulation. The University Grants Commission was created to promote coordination and determine and maintain standards of teaching, examination and research in universities. Section 26 of the UGC Act empowers the Commission to make regulations for carrying out its statutory functions, including matters concerning qualifications, minimum standards of instruction and maintenance of standards.

This creates a legitimate national interest. A university degree should not mean fundamentally different things merely because it was awarded in different parts of India. Minimum academic standards, qualifications and institutional quality therefore require some national framework.

But that framework creates a boundary problem.

Does maintaining standards also allow the national regulator to determine who selects the head of a State university?

That is where the apparently technical issue of a Vice-Chancellor search committee becomes a federal question.

Standards and institutional control are not necessarily the same thing. A regulator can prescribe the qualifications required of academic leaders without necessarily determining which constitutional or statutory authority should select them.

The controversy arises because those two questions have begun to overlap.

The search committee is where the federal question becomes concrete

The change proposed in the UGC’s 2025 regulations makes the institutional issue easier to see.

Under the 2018 framework, a search-cum-selection committee for State universities included a UGC-nominated member, while the remaining composition was governed by the relevant State law. The Chancellor or Visitor would appoint the VC from among the recommended candidates.

The 2025 draft changes that architecture. It provides for a three-member search-cum-selection committee comprising one nominee each of the Chancellor or Visitor, the UGC Chairman and the university’s apex body such as the Senate, Syndicate or Executive Council. Since the Chancellor of a State university is typically the Governor, the proposed arrangement gives the Governor-linked and UGC-linked sides two of the three positions on the panel.

That changes the institutional balance.

The argument for such a structure is not difficult to understand. The UGC says the regulations are intended to remove ambiguity, strengthen the selection process and align higher education with the objectives of the National Education Policy. The draft also broadens eligibility for the VC’s position, allowing senior professionals from areas such as industry, public policy and public administration to enter the pool.

There is therefore a genuine quality argument behind the reform.

But there is also a federal question: if a State university is constituted by State law, can a national regulatory framework determine the architecture through which its head is selected?

The answer cannot simply be assumed from the desirability of national standards.

There is also an important distinction between the proposal and an existing rule. The UGC’s current regulations register does not list the 2025 Vice-Chancellor proposal as a notified regulation. It was a draft, so its provisions should not be treated as settled law.

The Governor’s role makes the problem more complicated

The controversy becomes sharper because the Governor occupies two different positions.

As Governor, the office belongs to the constitutional structure of the State. As Chancellor, however, the Governor’s powers arise from State university laws rather than directly from the Constitution.

That distinction is crucial.

The Governor’s role as Chancellor was inherited from an older institutional model. The first Indian universities established by the British in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras placed the Governors of the presidencies in the position of ex-officio Chancellors. The model survived Independence and was subsequently incorporated into the governance structures of State universities.

For decades, this arrangement attracted less attention because the political configuration of the country made the distinction less consequential. When the same political party dominated the Centre and most States, disputes over the Governor’s university role were less likely to become major federal confrontations.

The political landscape changed with the emergence of stronger regional parties and governments controlled by parties different from the one at the Centre. The office of Chancellor consequently acquired a different significance.

A Governor appointed through the Union’s constitutional process could exercise statutory powers inside a university created and financed by a State government. That creates two centres of authority around the same institution. When those centres disagree, the university becomes the arena in which the disagreement is played out.

States have tried different ways of redrawing that boundary

The disputes across States show that there is no single State response to the Governor-Chancellor arrangement.

Tamil Nadu has sought greater State control over the appointment of Vice-Chancellors through legislation. In 2022, the State government passed Bills seeking to change the existing arrangement, although the measures were not approved. Subsequent disagreements also arose over the composition of search committees for several universities.

Karnataka pursued a more specific institutional change. In December 2024, its Assembly passed a Bill seeking to replace the Governor with the Chief Minister as Chancellor of the Karnataka State Rural Development and Panchayati Raj University. The proposal remained pending with the Governor.

Maharashtra had earlier experimented with another arrangement. A 2021 Bill sought to reduce the Governor’s role to approving VC candidates recommended through the State government and give a larger role to the State’s Higher and Technical Education Minister. The measure was later withdrawn after a change of government, restoring the earlier arrangement.

Kerala presents yet another layer. The conflict there became prominent around the reappointment of Gopinath Ravindran as Vice-Chancellor of Kannur University in 2021. In 2023, the Kerala Assembly passed a Bill seeking to replace the Governor with eminent educationists as Chancellors. The Bill has remained pending for Presidential assent.

Taken together, these cases show that States have experimented with different institutional designs rather than following a single alternative to the Governor-Chancellor model.

Some have sought to remove the Governor from the Chancellor’s position. Others have attempted to reduce the Governor’s discretion. Some have tried to redesign the appointment mechanism itself.

The federal dispute is therefore not simply about which office should possess the final power.

It is about how institutional authority should be distributed when more than one level of government has a legitimate interest in the university.

The legal question is narrower — and harder — than the political dispute

The UGC’s authority adds another layer to the problem.

The UGC Act gives the Commission responsibility for promoting and coordinating university education and maintaining standards. Section 26 permits regulations for implementing that statutory mandate.

The contested issue is whether that authority extends from determining academic standards to prescribing the architecture through which a State university selects its Vice-Chancellor.

One legal interpretation argues that the UGC Act does not expressly confer power over VC appointments. Since universities are established by legislation of the Union or the States, the argument goes, the relevant legislature determines the qualifications, selection method and conditions of service of its Vice-Chancellor. Regulations made under a parent statute cannot exceed the authority delegated by that statute.

At the same time, the Supreme Court has held that appointments to Vice-Chancellor posts cannot be made contrary to applicable UGC regulations. In its judgment concerning Gujarat university appointments, the Court held that the UGC regulations prevailed over inconsistent State-law provisions on the qualifications for appointment, and directed that the relevant State legislation be brought into conformity.

The coexistence of these positions is why the dispute cannot be reduced to a simple assertion that either the UGC or the States unquestionably possess the final word.

The harder question is where regulation ends and institutional governance begins.

A regulator may have authority to insist that the person appointed to an academic leadership position meets nationally recognised standards. That does not automatically answer who should constitute the search committee, who should nominate its members or which statutory authority should make the final appointment.

Those questions determine institutional control.

Kerala shows how an appointment dispute can become a federal dispute

Kerala illustrates how quickly the institutional layers can overlap.

Under the Kerala University Act, the VC is appointed by the Chancellor on the recommendation of a three-member committee. The arrangement includes representation from the university, the UGC Chairman and the Chancellor.

The dispute over appointments subsequently moved beyond the committee itself.

The controversy around the Kannur University VC became connected to the larger question of whether the Governor should continue to serve as Chancellor. The State legislature then attempted to change the arrangement by replacing the Governor with eminent educationists.

An appointment dispute can therefore move through several legal levels:

a disagreement over an individual appointment can become a dispute over the Chancellor;

the Chancellor’s position can become a question about State university legislation;

and State legislation can then intersect with national higher-education regulation.

The original appointment is only the visible point at which these different authorities collide.

Changing the political authority does not automatically solve institutional autonomy

It would be easy to reduce the dispute to a choice between Governor control and State control.

That would leave out the university itself.

A State government may have a legitimate interest in an institution it establishes and substantially finances. The Union may have a legitimate interest in maintaining national academic standards. The Governor may possess statutory powers under State university legislation. The university’s own governing bodies also have an institutional interest in choosing academic leadership.

The difficulty begins when one of these interests becomes strong enough to dominate the selection process.

Replacing one political authority with another does not, by itself, answer the question of institutional independence.

The more useful question is therefore:

What safeguards prevent the appointment process from becoming an extension of political authority, regardless of which political authority is involved?

That shifts the debate from the identity of the appointing authority to the design of the appointment process.

The university itself cannot remain peripheral

The person being appointed is supposed to lead the university. Yet the university community can have a relatively limited role in deciding who that person should be.

The 2025 draft gives the university’s apex body one of the three seats on the search committee, while the Chancellor and UGC Chairman nominate the other two.

International models offer a different institutional possibility. Search committees in universities in the United States and United Kingdom commonly involve combinations of senior administrators, governing bodies, faculty representatives and external experts, with student participation in some cases.

These systems cannot simply be transplanted into India. Indian universities operate within a different constitutional and political environment.

But they raise a useful institutional question:

Should the people who understand the university’s academic and administrative requirements have a meaningful role in identifying the person who will lead it?

A university is not simply an administrative department of either government. Its leadership has to manage academic standards, research, finances, faculty, students and institutional strategy.

The appointment mechanism therefore has to reconcile two requirements that can easily pull in different directions:

public accountability and institutional independence.

The problem predates the 2025 draft

The present controversy is not entirely a product of the latest UGC regulations.

India has repeatedly examined the Governor’s role as Chancellor.

The Sarkaria Commission treated the Chancellor role as statutory rather than constitutional and examined its relationship with the State’s elected government.

The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution called for political neutrality, clearer definition of the Chancellor’s role and greater university autonomy.

The Punchhi Commission went further, recommending that Governors concentrate on their constitutional responsibilities and avoid statutory roles such as Chancellor. It suggested that States could appoint eminent academics or experts instead.

These recommendations matter because they show that the institutional tension has existed for decades.

The 2025 draft has made the problem more visible because it brings national regulation directly into the design of the VC selection process. But the underlying question — who should exercise authority over the leadership of a State university, and under what safeguards — is considerably older.

The real federal issue is the overlap of legitimate authorities

The Vice-Chancellor controversy exposes a difficult feature of Indian federalism: authority can be divided on paper while remaining concentrated in practice.

A State may establish a university.

The Union may set national standards.

The UGC may regulate qualifications.

The Governor may serve as Chancellor.

The university may have its own governing bodies.

The courts may adjudicate conflicts between these authorities.

Each institution can therefore possess a legitimate piece of the system while the overall arrangement remains institutionally unstable.

That is why the controversy repeatedly returns in different forms.

The question is not simply whether the Governor should appoint the VC, whether the State government should have greater control, or whether the UGC should have a stronger role.

Each answer creates a second question.

If the State controls the process, what protects the university from State-level political pressure?

If the Governor exercises the power, what prevents the Chancellor’s statutory role from becoming a source of conflict with the elected State government?

If the UGC determines the appointment architecture, how far can a regulator go before standard-setting becomes institutional governance?

And if the university itself has only limited participation, where does academic independence enter the process?

The real challenge is to design an appointment system in which authority, accountability and academic independence reinforce rather than undermine one another.

The federal battle is therefore not really about the VC

The Vice-Chancellor is simply where the deeper conflict becomes visible.

At one level, India needs national standards in higher education. Degrees, qualifications and academic quality cannot be completely detached from a national framework.

At another, State universities are institutions created through State law, embedded in State public systems and often substantially dependent on State governments for their functioning.

Between these realities sits the unresolved question of institutional control.

If the national regulator moves from setting standards toward determining institutional leadership, the boundary between regulation and governance becomes blurred.

If State governments treat universities as extensions of their political administration, institutional autonomy faces a different threat.

If Governors exercise substantial statutory authority without a sufficiently insulated appointment process, the university can become caught between competing political centres.

And if the university community itself has too little role in selecting its leadership, neither federalism nor autonomy is fully protected.

That is the deeper lesson of India’s VC battles.

Federalism is not only about deciding which government gets a power. It is also about designing institutions so that the exercise of that power does not overwhelm the institution it is supposed to govern.

The question facing State universities is therefore larger than who appoints the Vice-Chancellor.

It is whether India can build a system in which the person who leads a university is accountable to public institutions without becoming captive to them — and where national standards can coexist with State legislation without turning academic leadership into another battlefield of Centre-State politics.