Which of the following statements are correct about a Central University ? 1.…

Concept

A Central University is a university brought into existence by a statute that Parliament itself enacts, and the Acts and Statutes of such universities place the President of India in the office of Visitor. The Visitor is a supervisory authority standing outside the university’s own working machinery: the Visitor nominates members to the university’s governing bodies, may order an inspection or an inquiry into its affairs and its finances, and gives assent to the Statutes it frames. Chairing the governing bodies in their ordinary business is the work of the university’s own officers, the Vice-Chancellor and the Chancellor, and not of the Visitor.

Application

Read each of the four statements against that division of roles.

• Establishment by an Act of Parliament. This is precisely what marks a Central University off from a State University, which a State legislature creates by its own Act, and from a Deemed-to-be University, which is declared as such under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956. The claim holds.

• The President of India as Visitor. The Central Universities Act, 2009 and the individual central-university Acts, for example the Banaras Hindu University Act, 1915, the Delhi University Act, 1922 and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Act, 1966, each name the President of India as the Visitor of the university. The claim holds.

• Nomination of members to the Executive Council or Board of Management. Nominating a fixed number of members to the Executive Council and to the Court is one of the Visitor’s express statutory powers, and it is how the Visitor influences the composition of these bodies without sitting on them. The claim holds.

• Presiding over meetings of the Executive Committee or the Court. Here the claim breaks down. The powers the statutes confer on the Visitor are nomination, inspection and inquiry, and assent to the Statutes; chairing the university’s own bodies is not among them. The Vice-Chancellor is the ex officio chairperson of the Executive Council, and the Chancellor presides over the Court. The President neither sits in nor chairs those meetings.

Cross-check

Statement 4 is the only discriminator in this set, so the whole item turns on it: every combination that carries statement 4 stands or falls with it, and the single combination that omits statement 4 is the one that survives. The same division of roles is visible in a State University, where the Governor of the State is the Chancellor and exercises the equivalent supervisory powers, while the ordinary meetings of the governing bodies are again chaired by the university’s own officers.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 therefore hold and statement 4 does not, so the correct combination is 1, 2 and 3.