Amid a standoff with Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced that a Bill will be tabled in Assembly on Wednesday, August 24, curtailing the Governor’s powers as Chancellor of 13 universities in the state. The 10-day Assembly session, which began on Monday, August 22, was convened specifically to float 12 Bill, after 11 ordinances lapsed earlier this month due to a delay by the Governor.
The ordinances expired on August 8, and Governor Arif Mohammed Khan said that he did not have time to read them before the deadline. "I need time to go through them. I have to apply my mind. Do you want me to sign them without applying my mind? We must uphold the spirit of democracy and ruling through ordinances is not something which is desirable in a democracy," he said at the time.
The standoff between the Governor and the ruling CPI(M) continued when Khan stayed the appointment of Priya Varghese — the wife of Pinarayi Vijayan’s personal secretary Gopinath Ravindran — as an associate professor of Malayalam at Kannur University. "The process of the appointment, it appears to be a case of favouritism and nepotism. A person who is not qualified to be appointed as an assistant professor on prima facie is being appointed because she is the spouse of the secretary to the chief minister. This is political. There is absolutely no doubt," he alleged. The CPI(M), meanwhile, called the Governor’s move “unconstitutional”, and said that the government had no “illegal” role in the appointment of Priya Varghese.
Governor Arif Khan said on August 20 that he will order a full fledged investigation into the allegations of nepotism in appointments made to various posts in universities in the state. "Right from the professor down to the lower staff, they want to have their relations. Now I am going to have a full-fledged inquiry on how many such appointments have been made during the last two-three years", Khan told reporters.