Threat to federalism in agricultural education

Last Updated22/11/2022

The Kerala High Court recently annulled the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor of the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS).

The appointment violated the University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulations of 2018. It listed two specific violations:
Search committee recommended a single name and not a panel;
In the search committee, the State government included the Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) instead of a UGC nominee.

It weakens the principle of federalism by dismantling the role of State governments in the governance of agricultural universities.
It raises an existential threat for the facilitator and coordinator of agricultural education
Creating a false equivalence between the university system under the UGC and the agricultural university system under the State governments.

Agriculture was included as an occupied field in List II (State List) in the Seventh Schedule.
Agricultural education was detached from other streams of higher education and attached to agriculture in List II itself.
Entry 14 of List II reads: “Agriculture, including agricultural education and research.
Education is in List III (Concurrent List).
It includes technical education, medical education and universities, subject to the provisions of entries 63, 64, 65 and 66 of List I…”.
But there is no mention of agricultural education in Entry 25 of List III.
The poor applicability of Entry 66 of List I is the reason why agricultural universities have been facilitated and coordinated by the ICAR, even when they were governed by State governments.

The ICAR has had a unique legal status.
It was established in 1929 as a department of the Government of India (GoI) though it was also a society registered under the Societies Registration Act.
1973: Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) was set up under the Agriculture Ministry to facilitate agricultural research and education, coordinate between the Centre and States, and administrate the ICAR.
1983: The Supreme Court ruled that “ICAR is almost an inseparable adjunct of the GoI having an outward form of being a society; it could be styled as a society set up by the State and therefore, would be an instrumentality of the State”.
ICAR has facilitated and coordinated agricultural education for about 50 years, as a national expert body and without overstepping into the constitutional jurisdiction of the State governments.
Eg: ICAR desired to bring about some uniformity in the administration of agricultural universities, it did not take recourse to a one-size-fits-all parliamentary legislation.
- Instead, it chose to send a ‘Model Act for Agricultural Universities in India’ to the State governments and let them decide whether to accept or reject it.

The ICAR needs to implead itself in the KUFOS case at the appeal stage.
It must state that agricultural education is a part of Entry 14 of List II and cannot be subjected to the powers of Entry 66 of List I.
What is at stake is not just the spirit of federalism but also the unique status conferred to agricultural education by the Constitution.