Mediocre Appointments Can Damage Country's Future: Varun Gandhi On JNU's New VC

BJP MP Varun Gandhi on Tuesday slammed the choice of Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit as JNU vice-chancellor, saying such "mediocre appointments serve to damage our human capital and our youth's future".

With few higher education institutions on a par with global standards, he said, India needs to have right leaders to shape the journey for universities likely to succeed and, as such, appointing someone with little to offer in academic vision, credentials or even the ability to communicate, is "a path to mediocrity and long-term illiteracy for our human capital". 

Gandhi shared on Twitter the press release put out by Pandit after she took over, and said this is an exhibition of "illiteracy".

He said, "This press release from the new JNU VC is an exhibition of illiteracy, littered with grammatical mistakes (would strive vs will strive; students friendly vs student-friendly; excellences vs excellence). Such mediocre appointments serve to damage our human capital & our youth's future."

"We need leaders, with the right values, and discipline - not those who cannot do basic due diligence on their first press release with regards to their appointment. A great institution like JNU needs empathy, sensitivity and careful steering, not a loudmouth, with little verbal control," he added. 

Academic credentials and past experience, not retweets, should be the criteria for selection, he said, in an apparent reference to some controversial tweets from an unverified handle bearing her name. The handle has been since taken down. 

The central government appointed Pandit as the vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, making her the first woman to hold the post.

The 59-year-old Pandit is also an alumna of JNU where she pursued her MPhil as well as PhD in International Relations.