Jamshedpur, July 25: Rajnish Srivastava has been appointed the new director of National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jamshedpur.

Srivastava, who is currently posted as the director of NIT, Bhopal, will take charge next week. At present, S.K. Sarangi was looking after NIT, Jamshedpur, besides handling NIT, Rourkela.

The office of the chairman of board of governors, NIT, Jamshedpur, confirmed the appointment. Vijay Singh Rana, head of corporate relations, Tata Steel, who looks into the affairs of NIT, said B. Muthuraman, chairman of the board of governors, has been sent a fax about the appointment. But the appointment of the new director comes at a time when the institute is surrounded by controversies over the charge of various department heads.

Sarangi was assigned the director’s job here on June 8 this year and within a month of his appointment he had ordered transfers and replaced the deans. A week after this, he replaced the heads of various departments. Although the director claimed to have cleared the deck for a healthy academic atmosphere, he overlooked the seniority among teachers which triggered a controversy.

Sarangi had replaced eight heads of departments, stressing that seniority would be the basis for rotation. While carrying out the replacement in the civil engineering, the director made A.K. Singh the department head even though professor M.M. Prasad was more senior. Singh is the general-secretary of the NIT Teachers’ Association.

Similarly, M.K. Agrawal, an assistant professor of metallurgical department was made the heads of department, where as professor S.N. Sinha was overlooked. Akhileswar Kumar, who is an assistant of the electronics and communication department, was made the head of that faculty even though Arvind Choubey was much senior to him. In the chemistry department, A.K. Chowdhury, a lecturer, was made the head of department but M.K. Banerjee was the fittest candidate for the post, said sources.

Erstwhile director, S.K. Sarangi, said there was a compulsion because of which he had to resort to the decisions.

“Some junior teachers were being systematically harassed by the seniors. Therefore, I posted heads on rotation basis. But what was lacking here was the adequate number of professors in each department. Therefore, I had to make a choice between the larger devils and the lesser devils,” he said.