Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday took a dig at the University of Hyderabad for conducting kiss festivals and said that universities should not hold such festivals.
Terming UoH student Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the JNU incidents as unfortunate, he said that he had remained quiet on the Rohith Vemula suicide as he did not want to make an issue for narrow political gains, but he had taken all measures to restore normalcy on the campus.
While speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Mr Rao said universities should be centres for excellence and education and not centres for anarchy.
“I was shocked to know that events like kiss festivals are being held in universities now. Is that correct? Does anybody accept that? Rohith and the JNU incidents are unfortunate. I strongly condemn them. But I don’t want to make an issue out of it by raking up this ‘ism’ and that ‘ism’,” he remarked.
He said the state government did not appoint V-Cs to any university because it wanted to cleanse the system by appointing V-Cs with good character, integrity and values. Search is on.
“Some earlier V-Cs in undivided AP resorted to irregularities by making several appointments just before retiring. We have changed the Universities Act, according power to the state government to appoint chancellors and vice-chancellors. We took permission from the Governor, who used to be the chancellor of all the universities, for changing the Act to appoint pioneers in various fields as chancellors and highly qualified intellectuals as vice-chancellors to improve standards. The search committees have been constituted to identify such persons," he said.
