Vice chancellors of all Tamil Nadu state universities skipped a conference chaired by Governor RN Ravi in Nilgiris district’s Udhagamandalam on Friday, The Hindu reported.

The governor claimed that the state universities were warned against attending the two-day conference by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in the state, ANI reported.

This comes amid strained ties between the state government and Ravi after the Supreme Court’s April 8 verdict that laid down a timeline for the Tamil Nadu governor to act on bills passed by the Assembly.

Fifty-six vice chancellors of higher education institutions, including five central universities, 20 state universities, four central institutions and 27 private universities, were invited for the conference organised by the Raj Bhavan, The Indian Express reported.

Eighteen representatives attended the event, the newspaper quoted an unidentified Raj Bhavan official as saying.

Among the state universities, only two sent their representatives: the director of the research department at Periyar University and a college principal attached to Alagappa University’s physical education department.

On Friday, Ravi claimed that the vice chancellors from the state universities had told him verbally and in writing that the state government had directed them not to participate in the conference.

The governor also claimed that one of the vice chancellors was detained at a police station and another had been threatened by the police not to attend the conference. “I have spoken to them [both officials] and advised them to take care of their families,” The Hindu quoted Ravi as saying.

The court’s ruling on April 8 came on a petition filed by the Tamil Nadu government after Ravi did not act on several bills for over three years before rejecting them and sending some to the president.

Most of the bills related to higher education, including measures to remove the governor as chancellor of state universities. Of the 10 re-enacted bills sent to the president in November 2023, one was approved, seven were rejected and two were pending.

The court held that Ravi’s decision to withhold assent to 10 bills, some of which were pending since January 2020, and refer them to the president after they were re-enacted by the Assembly was “illegal and erroneous”.

The court declared that the 10 bills would be deemed to have received the governor’s assent from the date they were passed a second time by the legislature. It also set aside any action taken by the president based on the governor’s reference.

In its 414-page judgement, the court also imposed a three-month deadline on the president to approve or reject such bills.

A week ahead of the conference hosted by the governor, a similar event was organised by Chief Minister MK Stalin, which was attended by vice chancellors and registrars, according to The Indian Express.

Responding to the accusations of a “power struggle” with the DMK government after the April 8 verdict, the Raj Bhavan issued a press release on Wednesday to dismiss “misleading media reports” as “entirely erroneous and mischievous”.

The conference was “carefully planned and organised in April every year since 2022”, the press release 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,” it added. “These are scandalous and far from the truth.”

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