West Bengal’s proposed university transfer law is being presented as a way to move experienced faculty and staff to newer or under-resourced institutions. But the opposition from Burdwan University teachers has exposed a deeper administrative question: can the state strengthen weaker universities by transferring personnel without disrupting the institutions from which they are moved?
The West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, passed by the state Assembly on September 10, inserts Section 14A into the 2017 Act. The provision enables the transfer of teaching and non-teaching employees between state universities for “administrative reasons”. The Bill has been sent to governor and ex-officio chancellor of state-aided universities R.N. Ravi.
The immediate dispute is not only about employee mobility. It concerns how universities are planned, staffed and governed across a state where institutional capacity is uneven. The BJP government has argued that experienced professors could help newer universities in places such as Jhargram and Cooch Behar build academic infrastructure and develop into centres of excellence. The provision therefore treats the university system as a network in which staff can be redistributed according to administrative need.
That approach could address an obvious problem: newer or under-resourced universities may lack the faculty and administrative personnel required to establish departments, develop research activity and support students. The government’s stated objective is to use existing experience to accelerate institutional development rather than allow newer campuses to remain weak for years.
But the Burdwan University Teachers’ Association, or BUTA, argues that a university is not simply a collection of transferable posts. In a representation signed by its president Abhijit Bandyopadhyay and three other members on September 23, the association asked Ravi to reconsider and withdraw the provision. It said teachers were recruited against posts in particular universities and had built their academic, research and family arrangements around those institutions.
The dispute highlights the difference between administrative staffing and academic work. A post may be vacant or transferable on paper, but a faculty member’s work is tied to research projects, laboratories, academic collaborations and PhD supervision. BUTA warned that compulsory transfers could disrupt all four. This is the central institutional risk raised by the Bill: a policy intended to fill shortages in one university could create instability in another if transfers are made without considering ongoing academic responsibilities.
The expression “administrative reasons” is also significant because the Bill, as described in the report, does not establish publicly defined criteria for when a transfer should occur. BUTA has demanded clear and objective standards, procedural safeguards, an opportunity for employees to make representations and protection against arbitrary or selective application. These demands point to the importance of process in public university administration. The question is not merely who can be transferred, but who decides, on what evidence and with what avenue of review.
The vacancy figures cited by the association show why the policy debate cannot be separated from the staffing condition of existing universities. At Burdwan University, 177 of 363 sanctioned teaching posts were vacant, representing 48.8 per cent of the total. Thirty of 59 officer posts were vacant, while 909 of 1,317 non-teaching posts required appointment.
Those numbers suggest that Burdwan itself has substantial staffing gaps. Transferring employees from the university could therefore address a shortage elsewhere while leaving an established institution with fewer people to teach, supervise research, run laboratories and manage its administration. At the same time, the figures also show why the government may be seeking flexible ways to deploy personnel across the university system. The evidence supplied in the report does not establish how many employees would be transferred, which universities would be covered or how the state would calculate the staffing needs of each institution.
This uncertainty matters because sanctioned strength and operational capacity are not identical. A sanctioned post indicates an approved position, but it does not by itself show the number of students, departments, laboratories, research commitments or administrative functions that depend on that post. Similarly, transferring an experienced professor to a newer university may help establish a department, but the effect would depend on whether the receiving institution has the facilities, support staff and academic systems needed to make that appointment productive.
The Bill also raises the issue of institutional identity. Universities develop specialised departments, research relationships and teaching practices over time. Bhaskar Goswami, who teaches economics at Burdwan University, said the state should consult universities, teachers’ organisations and other academic stakeholders before proposing and implementing such a transfer policy. He said the academic identity and institutional character of individual universities should be protected.
That concern is particularly relevant when the policy is intended to create centres of excellence in newer locations. Building a university is not the same as filling vacancies. It involves establishing a stable academic culture, developing departments, retaining staff, creating research capacity and providing students with predictable supervision. The report does not provide evidence of a separate framework for these functions. It records only the government’s stated objective and the teachers’ objections to the transfer mechanism.
The administrative design of the policy will therefore determine whether it operates as system-wide capacity building or as a staffing shortcut. A transparent framework would need to distinguish between temporary deployment and permanent transfer, identify the circumstances that qualify as an administrative reason and explain how the sending university’s needs would be protected. The supplied report does not say whether the amendment contains such distinctions or safeguards.
The role of the governor is another important part of the institutional structure. The Bill has been sent to R.N. Ravi in his capacity as governor and ex-officio chancellor of state-aided universities. The teachers’ appeal places the next decision in the chancellor’s office, while the government’s justification places responsibility for broader university development with the state administration. The result is a policy issue involving the Assembly, the state government, the chancellor, individual universities, employees and students.
The protest at Burdwan also shows that the Bill is being considered alongside existing employment and administration disputes. On Wednesday, members of a joint platform of retired and serving university employees demonstrated on the Rajbati campus. They opposed the Bill and also sought settlement of long-pending retirement benefits and medical insurance. These demands are distinct from the proposed transfer system, but their appearance at the same protest indicates that staffing policy is being assessed within a wider context of unresolved employee concerns.
For students, the consequences described in the debate are indirect but practical. Disrupted PhD supervision, interrupted research projects and changes in faculty availability can affect the continuity of academic work. For universities, the issue is whether transfers will strengthen departments or weaken institutional planning. For the state, the challenge is how to reduce disparities between older and newer universities without treating personnel as the only available form of infrastructure.
The available evidence confirms that West Bengal is attempting to create a legal route for inter-university transfers and that the government sees this as a way to support newer or under-resourced institutions. It also confirms that Burdwan University faces large vacancies and that its teachers fear compulsory transfers could damage ongoing academic work. What remains unclear is the proposed scale of transfers, the criteria for selecting employees and institutions, the safeguards against arbitrary decisions and the mechanism for measuring whether the policy improves university capacity.
Those details will determine whether the amendment becomes a tool for coordinated public investment in higher education or a source of new instability within the university system. The next developments to watch are the governor’s response to the Bill, any rules issued to implement Section 14A and whether the state consults universities and employee organisations before the provision is applied.
