Chennai: Paving way for a fresh tussle between the DMK government and the Raj Bhavan, the Tamilnadu Assembly has passed a Bill to set up Ayush University in the State with Chief Minister M K Stalin as its Chancellor, instead of the existing practice of Governor being the Chancellor of the State-run varsities.
The Bill, which was moved by Health Minister Ma.Subramanian, was passed on Thursday, amid thumping of deks by the members of the Treasury benches.
The Bill seeks to give the much-needed thrust to research in Indian systems of medicine as was announced in the 2021-22 Budget.
Interestingly, the adoption of the Bill comes a couple of days after the Assembly adopted two legislations empowering the State government to appoint Vice-Chancellors as against the existing practice of Governor making the appointments in his capacity as the Chancellor.
The passage of the Bill was seen as an attempt to clip the powers of the Governor at a time when the DMK government is at loggerheads with the Raj Bhavan over the Governor yet to take a decision on several Bills, including the NEET (not forwarding to the President) and Chief Minister M K Stalin going to the extent of asking the Governor to do the job of a postman by forwarding the NEET Bill to President for his assent instead of giving his own assent.
The new Bill said the Chief Minister would be the Chancellor and would thus have the absolute powers to appoint the Vice-Chancellor from the three names shortlisted by the search committee.
This is not the first university in the State that has the Chief Minister as the Chancellor–late CM J Jayalalithaa was the founder-Chancellor of
the Tamilnadu Music and Fine Arts University.
The Siddha University would offer courses on Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy – collectively called Ayush.
‘Scientific validation of the medicines prescribed by Siddha and other traditional systems need to be further researched to be successful all over the world so that the benefits can reach the entire humanity’, the Bill said.
In order to develop Siddha and other systems of medicine by giving due thrust for research, the government considers that a separate university may be established, Subramanian said.