No female representative in new syndicate body

Vadodara: MSU officials often take pride in the fact that the varsity campus is home to more number of girl students compared to boys. In fact, year after year girl students have been outshining boys by bagging almost double number of gold medals than boys during the convocations. However, the new syndicate body of MSU which will take charge on March 4 will not a have single female representative.

In fact, the university itself was groomed by Hansa Mehta, who had served as first vice-chancellor of the university between 1949 and 1958. Even the outgoing syndicate body had two female representatives — Hemal Mehta and Tejal Amin, who was appointed as government nominee. But the new syndicate will function without any female member on the board.

Ahead of the syndicate elections which concluded on Tuesday, the ruling saffron group which swept the polls, had not fielded a single female candidate on the 15 seats of elected representatives. Its rival saffron group, the ‘sankalan samiti’ which was backed by the BJP, the RSS, the ABVP and the teachers body – the Maharaja Sayajirao Vishyavidyalay Shaikshik Sangh – fielded just one female in its panel.

However, like other candidates backed by the ‘sankalan samiti’ – the female contestant lost in the poll fray.

When questioned, leader of the ruling group argued that since there weren’t enough female members in the senate who could contest in the polls, it did not field any. But the fact is that even when it came to appointing VC nominees, female members were not given any preference while the ruling group had fielded female candidates for bodies like board of accounts and board of extra mural studies. Ironically, the university is touting itself of being a campus maintaining gender balance. Only recently, the university had officially taken a stand sharing its “proud moments”.

“MSU is ranked among top 3 and the only three varsities in India which can boast of having more women than men, having a female-male ratio of 56:44. Where even countries like Japan fare poorly when it comes to maintaining gender balance,” the university had posted in response to World University Rankings 2018.