Shillong, May 10: The North-Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) has written to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan flagging the delay in issuing the advertisement for the Vice-Chancellor’s post at NEHU and has urged against any extension for incumbent VC, Prof Prabha Shankar Shukla.
In its letter, NEHUTA said the term of Shukla is set to end on July 26. The Department of Higher Education under the Union Ministry of Education, vide a letter on February 18, had written to the Registrar to set in motion the process for appointing the next VC. However, more than two and a half months later, the advertisement has not been released in the public domain.
NEHUTA said that Shukla has been absent from his duties at the NEHU headquarters in Shillong continuously for the last 540 days, about one and a half years, while drawing a full salary. Shukla fled Shillong after sustained protests against his leadership by staff and students and has not set foot back in the city.
The association accused him of “total disrespect” to the NEHU Act, Statutes, Ordinances, Regulations and Rules, UGC Regulation 2018, UGC-Model Cadre Recruitment Rules for Non-Teaching Staff, Government of India CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972; CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965, and said he violated the Right to Equality under Articles 14-16 of the Constitution on several instances.
It further alleged that the academic atmosphere of NEHU has been “completely vitiated” through misconduct, nepotism and favouritism in recruitments and appointments, which led to several litigations in the High Court of Meghalaya.
Pradhan was also told that Shukla’s tenure has also been marked by corruption charges linked to allotment of construction projects worth Rs 98 crore from the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs, with Tura campus projects allegedly handed over to the Manipur Tribal Development Corporation without following GFR Rules 2017.
The association termed the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 at the undergraduate level “haphazard”, stating that the first batch of NEP students are about to complete their sixth semester with no clarity on the fourth year programme. NEHU has no preparedness on bridging the fourth year NEP programme to Master degree/PhD programmes, it added.
Pointing to a decline in NIRF rankings, NEHUTA said NEHU was ranked 15 when NIRF started, 59 in 2021 when Shukla joined, 66 in 2022, 80 in 2023, 101-150 in 2024, and 151-200 in 2025. “We are sure that this year, we will be out of the list of top 200 in NIRF ranking,” the letter said.
“Keeping the interest of NEHU at the forefront and looking at the very poor state of affairs of the University due to the overall failure of Prof PS Shukla as the Vice-Chancellor, NEHUTA is against any kind of extension to Prof Shukla after 25/7/2026,” the association said.
NEHUTA urged the Education Minister to initiate the process of appointment of a new Vice-Chancellor urgently so the incoming VC can “normalise and perhaps restore the lost glory of NEHU.” The university needs a “new and competent Vice-Chancellor, who can work with the stakeholders, is not corrupt and has a vision and mission to lift it from the deep gorge where it has been pushed by Prof PS Shukla in the last five years or so,” it said.
