The state government, for reasons best known to it, dilly-dallied on the appointment for over a year before nominating four people to the Syndicate last week. It also nominated eight people to the Senate.

All the nominees are either active Bharatiya Janata Party workers or Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad members. The faxed report sent by an undersecretary in the Education department did have a few surprises in store, but some names were routinely discussed.

For instance, Professor Girish Rana of Amroli college is a relative of Union Textile Minister Kashiram Rana, while Kishorbhai Vaghela is Pradesh Secretary of ABVP. Anilbhai Goel and Bhagwanbhai Panachasara, the two other members are also ABVP members.

In fact, after the BJP government took over reins in Gujarat the Surat unit of ABVP had asked them to seek nominations of its members on the SGU Syndicate and the state government, surprisingly, complied with it.

The Senate members include: Surat city youth BJP president and vice-president Hemant Topiwala and Deepak Afrikawala respectively; Jogibhai Patel and Dharmesh Mistri, both BJP activists and Gaurang Vaidya, Ashwin Trivedi, Sadhanaben Bhandari and Bhaskar Raval, all ABVP members.

So far, the group led by former state-level president of Youth Congress Hoshang Mirza and president of South Gujarat University College and University Teachers Association Suryakant Shah was in majority and they simply did not allow vice-chancellor Ashwin Kapadia to breathe freely.

Kapadia in order to circumvent the majority did not show any interest in convening the meetings of Syndicate leading the group to drag him to the court. When he used the emergency powers enjoyed by him under Section 11 (4) of the SGU Act, he was hauled to the Gujarat High Court, which restrained him from further use of his emergency powers.

Kapadia convened only three Syndicate meeting since he took over on August 14. The rival group contended that the statute requires that the Syndicate should meet at least once a month. Not surprisingly, the vice-chancellor and his close aides were waiting for the appointment of government nominees to tip the scale in their favour.

Interestingly, the vice-chancellor himself was appointed by the Rashtriya Janata Party government and the newly nominated Syndicate members are expected to take a stand favouring the vice-chancellor. However, if an ABVP member is to be believed ``the vice-chancellor should not take the support for granted''.

The parishad will look the other way when it comes to issues like the plagiarised dissertation submitted by the vice-chancellor's daughter Krisha Kapadia in her M. Com. final year examination last year. It will also oppose the V-C on matters that seek to barter the students' interests, claims a senior parishad member.

A member of the Mirza group, however, does not feel that the new nominees will necessarily favour the V-C. He blames the division in the Syndicate on Kapadia's advisors and claims even those who are supposedly close to Kapadia are sympathisers of the Congress.

``There is no reason to believe that the Syndicate will be divided along the party lines,'' he feels. Moreover, the nominations have come as a surprise for Kapadia for he had suggested some other names, he claims.

But all seem to agree that the Syndicate will meet more frequently with the change in power equation.