A university dying a slow death

Darjeeling Hills University has students but no permanent vice chancellor, teachers, administrators or a campus

- Pritha Roy Choudhury

My future seems so bleak now. I don’t know what to do next,” said Ankit (name changed), a third-semester postgraduate student of mathematics at Darjeeling Hills University (DHU), West Bengal, which has neither teachers nor classrooms to teach in. The DHU has left all its students in a similar state.

A public state university established with much fanfare under the West Bengal’s Greenfield University Act 2018, DHU started operating from November 2021 under its first vice-chancellor Subiresh Bhattacharya. As the VC of North Bengal University (NBU), Bhattacharya had the additional charge of DHU, temporarily located in the NBU campus. Since then, the university has had no permanent VC, teachers, administrative staff or campus and is, in effect, dying a slow death.

The first batch was admitted late in November 2021 and not in September as is standard. This led to agitation and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee herself had to go to Darjeeling in October 2021 to pacify and reassure local leaders and educationists.

A website was created for DHU under the supervision of NBU and classes started from January 2022, said a teacher on conditions of anonymity. A few months later in September 2022, derailing all plans, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Bhattacharya in connection with the West Bengal teacher recruitment scam. Bhattacharya had been the chairman of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) when the scam had allegedly taken place.

VC appointment