In a major blow for Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi, vice-chancellors of state-run universities turned their back on a two-day conference organised by him and was inaugurated by Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankar at Ooty (Udhagamandalam) on Friday.

The turnout at the conference was poor despite the high publicity with invitations for 56 heads of higher education institutions, including 20 state universities, five Central varsities and 27 private universities. And most of those who attended the conference were not VCs, but representatives of the institutions deputed for the conference.

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The event at the Raj Bhavan in Ooty is the fourth edition of the VC’s conference since Ravi took over as governor and the first after he was stripped of the power to appoint VCs following the indictment by the Supreme Court.

Numbers tell a story for any event and this one proved to be a reality check for Ravi as most of the VCs have cited other commitments and personal engagements. Of the 18 in attendance at the modest gathering, one is a director of research at the Periyar University, Salem, and another principal of a college affiliated to the Alagappa University, Karaikudi.

On 34 heads of institutions – state and private – staying away from the meet, Raj Bhavan sources said the ‘reasons were not known’. Quite interestingly, all the VCs have participated in all the three previous editions without fail.

There have been condemnations from the DMK’s allies, notably from the Congress, Left parties and the VCK, against the governor for holding the conference. The CPI(M) had asked VCs of state universities to boycott the event, terming it ‘unconstitutional’.

Dhankar’s participation too had been criticised as an attempt by the BJP to undermine the DMK government. For, the conference coming close on the heels of Chief Minister MK Stalin holding a meeting of the VCs and registrars on improving higher education shortly after the apex court passing strictures on the governor and granting assent to 10 Bills which stripped the governor of his powers as chancellor, is widely seen as a counter from the Raj Bhavan to show that the Governor is down but not out. No wonder, it had become yet another flashpoint in the continuing turf war. And Ravi is still the chancellor with powers to hold convocations, veto decisions of the Syndicate and Senate and call for records.

Following the backlash, the Raj Bhavan was forced to clarify that the event should not be seen as a ‘power struggle with the elected government’ as being portrayed by the media. In a media release on Wednesday, it said, “It is unfortunate that some ill-informed media reports have given this well-intentioned academic exercise a political twist, wrongly linked it with the recent court judgment and tried to project it as a power struggle between Raj Bhavan and the State Government. These are scandalous and far from the truth.”

Further, on the intention of the annual programme since 2022, the release read: “Earlier, our institutions, especially the state universities, never interacted with each other and functioned largely in their respective silos to the disadvantage of our students and was detrimental to the growth of the institutions.”