Shillong, Nov. 29: On Friday, the North Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) blasted Vice-Chancellor Prof. Prabha Shankar Shukla for attempting to place the blame for the current university crisis on the association, the state government, students, and non-teaching personnel.
“NEHUTA would like to strongly condemn his irresponsible statements with a malafide intention to defame the NEHUTA, all other stakeholders of the NEHU, and the entire state of Meghalaya,” said NEHUTA president Prof. Lakhon Kma in a statement. The Association is compelled to cast doubt on Prof. Shukla’s academic credentials because of her attempt to place the responsibility on NEHU teachers, which is unacceptable.
It is important to note that Prof. P. S. Shukla was chosen to be the Vice-Chancellor despite the fact that there were far more eligible nominated applicants. His appointment was entirely political. It is vital to publicly evaluate his academic and research accomplishments, publications, and other noteworthy research-related works, as he pleaded with the faculty about their continued performance. He said, “To our great dismay, Prof. P. S. Shukla continues to disparage and condemn the contributions of NEHU faculty, even though he has none.”
He repeatedly downgrades faculty research and contributions while simultaneously taking credit for the QS rating. In fact, during his more than three years as a venture capitalist, he has only made token contributions to the university’s research and academics and has not invested any resources to support them. Every member of the university community, as well as every facet of its academic, research, financial, and administrative responsibilities, have been severely let down by a political appointee VC like Prof. P. S. Shukla. This has resulted in a major mess, forcing students, faculty, non-teaching staff, and the general Meghalaya public to resort to protests and agitations, declaring him persona non grata and prohibiting him from entering NEHU.
The socio-cultural ethos and ecosystems of NEHU, Meghalaya, and the North-Eastern area are completely unknown to him. Professor Kma said, “The hunger strike and all of its negative effects on students’ health occurred because of his lack of understanding and poor handling of the situation, which is reflected in his reckless statements of blaming faculty and others for the decline in NIRF’s rank and his failure to respond to students’ demands for the immediate removal of errant officials like the Registrar and Deputy Registrar.”
Additionally, he stated, “The situation reached this point due to his stubborn and haughty lack of response, and in an attempt to conceal his own ineptitude, he is engaging in a blame game by shifting and targeting teachers, students, and non-teaching employees as well as their Associations and Unions, which are significant statutory bodies of elected representatives under the NEHU Act that was duly passed by the honorable Parliament.” Prof. Shukla’s egregious mishandling of NEHU’s affairs at every level is the cause of the institution’s declining NIRF grade. His entire term to date has been characterized by the destruction of meritocracy and the spread of mediocrity. He denied a considerably more productive twenty-something a second term as dean of the School of Social Sciences to an underachievers.
