Exclusive: Ten contenders for the post of vice chancellor (VC) at Nalsar Hyderabad have been short listed to appear before Nalsar chancellor and Andhra Pradesh High Court Chief Justice Madan B Lokur and the VC selection committee.

The group is set to meet at Lokur’s residence on Sunday (11 March), which is expected to result in a recommendation for three final names, out of whom one will be appointed by Lokur as Nalsar VC for the term 2012-17.

According to several sources close to the process, the only Nalsar faculty to have made it to the shortlist is the present registrar Acharyulu Sridhar.

The other shortlisted candidates are understood to be: Symbiosis law school director Shashikala Gurpur; Kurukshetra University’s Institute of Law director VK Aggarwal; NLU Orissa director Faizan Mustafa; NLSIU Bangalore registrar V Nagaraj; Faculty of Law Delhi University professor Gurdip Singh; NUJS Kolkata professor Manoj Kumar Sinha; Banaras Hindu University’s faculty of law dean DP Verma; and Ambedkar Law University Chennai VC V Vijayakumar.

It is understood that the selection committee convened a meeting around 28 February after receiving 22 nominations for the post, of which 18 were received before the nominations deadline. Soon after, it had a preliminary meeting short listing the present ten candidates, since the chancellor was keen to expedite the process.

Professor Amita Dhanda, who is presently dean of academic affairs at Nalsar, is understood to not be contending for VC-ship, despite having been nominated.

Dhanda told Legally India: “Universities require effective administrative governance and innovative academic imagination to flourish. I see my contribution in the academic realm of the university and therefore I am not a candidate for the post of VC.”

In November 2011, Dhanda had been nominated for the post of NUJS Kolkata VC after Mahendra Pal Singh, VC of the institute at the time, retired on 30 November, 2011. Singh had then stated his preference for an academician, as opposed to a pure administrator, for the position. However, according to sources Dhanda had indicated to the search committee that she did not wish her nomination to be taken forward.

The search committee consists of retired Supreme Court Justice AK Ganguly, NJA Bhopal director professor KN Chandrasekharan Pillai, and RGNUL VC professor Paramjit Singh Jaswal, as reported by Legally India on 27 February.

Current Nalsar VC professor Veer Singh resigned from the post earlier that month after a judicial report published by Legally India pursuant to an RTI request highlighted structural problems in the management and administration of Nalsar University, and named several faculty members as responsible for the irregularities.