After Visva-Bharati, Kalyani University has now come under allegations of irregularities in faculty recruitment. Repeated complaints of this nature across various state government universities have deeply unsettled sections of the academic community. Earlier, an academic had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging that the recruitment examinations at Visva-Bharati were not transparent. Fingers were pointed at the university authorities as well as the Vice-Chancellor. Now, similar allegations have emerged from Kalyani University.
As per multiple sources, to maintain integrity and transparency in the recruitment process, Bidyut Chakraborty had formally appointed the National Testing Agency (NTA) and paid an amount of 10 lakh for the agency to conduct and manage the recruitment and selection process. Notices were uploaded on the NTA portal, the NTA website declared the dates for the Computer Based Test (CBT), NTA issued the admit cards, and the agency also conducted the tests. The results (merit list) for the MTS post were published by NTA following standard procedures and rules, and appointment letters were issued based on this merit list.
However, during Bidyut Chakraborty’s tenure as interim Vice-Chancellor, after NTA conducted recruitment examinations for posts such as Assistant Registrar (AR), Deputy Registrar (DR), Computer System Analyst, and Programmer (on 05/04/24), the results and merit lists were allegedly not published. Instead, Visva-Bharati reportedly completed the selection process secretly by issuing its own provisional merit list. From the outset, the selection process for SR, DR, and Computer System Analyst/Programmer posts has been accused of violating rules and lacking transparency.
Typically, the testing agency publishes results and the parent institutions follow the same process for recruitment. To date, there are still no results or merit lists for AR/DR posts available on the NTA website. Questions have been raised about how the university prepared its own merit list and on what basis appointments were made from an internal panel.
Meanwhile, in his letter, Kalyani University professor Dr. Tushar Patua disclosed that he belongs to the Scheduled Tribe community and has been serving as an Associate Professor (Elementary) at Kalyani University since June 8, 2012. On June 22, 2025, he submitted an application for the post of Associate Professor (ST), Level 14, in Visva, Bharati University, after the university had issued notification Advertisement No. 2/2025 dated May 29, 2025. He confessed that he had submitted the same application twice before, in 2019 and 2021, but his applications were cancelled without any reasons.
It was through the university notification that, on January 8, 2026, he found out that his name was struck off the list of candidates to be interviewed on January 12, 2026, although he fulfilled the minimum eligibility criteria.
He felt dejected and asked the exclusion reasons in order to weigh the option of filing a lawsuit. Since the author of the letter belongs to a Scheduled Tribe, allegations of caste-based discrimination in faculty recruitment have also been raised against the university’s senior authorities.
Meanwhile, a letter from the university to the Union Ministry of Education stated that the Selection Committee meeting for the Assistant Registrar (UR) post, which was advertised under Advertisement No. 1/2023 dated April 17, 2023, was held on December 1, 2025. Interviews were held with fifteen eligible candidates, including the complainant Kaushik Gorain.
The selection committee, after interviewing 13 candidates, have recommended one candidate to the executive council, which has approved the recommendation on December 5, 2025. Therefore, the appointment letter was issued to the selected candidate who joined on December 21, 2025.
Professor Kaushik Gorain in his letter makes an additional point of accusing the recruitment Assistant Registrar at Viswa, Bharati University of being full of irregularities. He has charged the process with a lack of transparency, fairness, due process, and stated that the NTA conducted the computer based test (CBT) on February 5, 2024, and the interviews on December 1, 2025.
Nevertheless, it is reported that the candidate who was twelfth in the provisional merit list has been said to have taken the post on December 21, 2025 without the interview results being officially announced or the final merit list being made available. He argued that such a scenario is a matter of the highest integrity for the recruitment process and that Visva, Bharati's brand as an institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore on the principles of excellence and fairness has been put in jeopardy.
