KOCHI: Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) Vice-Chancellor Dr J Letha has scotched reports that the registrar of the university Dr S David Peter had tampered with the minutes of a Syndicate meeting where the issue of changing the name of K M Mani Centre for Budget Studies at the varsity had come up. Reports appearing in a section of the press had said that Syndicate member Eldho Abraham MLA had petitioned the VC about the “act of the registrar of changing the minutes of the Syndicate which decided to remove the prefix of K M Mani from the centre.”
Dr J Letha told DC on Monday that she had not received any such complaint from the MLA so far and added that the Registrar had not tampered with the minutes of the Syndicate meeting which took up the issue. “The Syndicate decided to inform the State Government of the opinion of the Syndicate to remove Mani’s name from the centre and asked it to take a decision on it, which was only proper. This was recorded in the minutes and consequently it was conveyed to the government also, but the government has not informed us of its decision so far,” Dr Letha said.
Eldho Abraham told DC on Monday that the Syndicate on October 15 had taken the decision to strip the name of K M Mani from the budget studies centre since he was facing a lot of allegations. “You can verify with other Syndicate members also if this claim is true or false. I had sent a petition to the VC three days ago against the registrar and the issue will be taken up in a serious manner in the next Syndicate meeting,” Eldho added. Dr J Letha said that she verified the camera records also which buttressed her stand that the registrar had not changed the minutes.
