The revamped Mahatma Gandhi University Syndicate could not hold its first meeting on Saturday with five sacked members entering the Syndicate meeting hall staking a claim to attend the meeting.

The 15 newly inducted members did not allow this and following a furore, the The vice-chancellor, Dr Rajan Gurukkal, announced putting off the meeting to Wednesday.

There were rumours in the morning that the Left-leaning employees at the varsity would block the new syndicate members.

This did not happen and according to sources, instead five sacked syndicate members, Dr Santhosh and Dr Fathima Beevi, who belonged to the principal constituency and Prof Rajasekharan Pillai, Prof Prakash and Prof Sasikumar of the teacher constituency, trooped in and the varsity security stopped them at the main entrance.

Later, they arrived at the syndicate hall along with the vice-chancellor and the pro-vice-chancellor “through the back door” and the new syndicate members objected to this.

The vice-chancellor is reported to have commented at the meeting that the ordinance revamping the syndicate was readied by `someone who doesn’t have any grasp of English language' and contained a lot of errors.

The five syndicate members said that they had every right to attend the meeting since their petition on the sacking issue was under the consideration of the High Court.

The new syndicate members said that with the High Court refusing to stay the new ordinance, the old members had no right to attend the meeting. The VC and PVC left the Syndicate meeting hall at 11.30 am, after announcing that the meeting had been postponed to January 11.

Later, some of the syndicate members said that they were informed by the VC the meeting had been put off to January 12. A few members said they would petition the Governor and the Education minister who are the chancellor and pro-chancellor of the university against the act of the VC.