Technically speaking, none of the faculties are actually headless, since the authorities appoint officer s on special duty or officiating dean or in-charge dean. But it is this stop-gap attitude that many academics are beginning to find galling.

As in-charge of the Arts faculty P C Kar said, ``I have to keep shuttling between the faculty office and the department as faculty papers cannot be signed in the department. This is definitely affecting my work as head and professor of the department of English''.

While Kar, who has been in charge of the faculty since September, indicated himself open to the deanship by saying that a permanent appointment would allow him distribute his work equally, his subordinates complained that because of the added load on Kar, departmental work was being affected. Not just the staff, students, too, complain of Kar's preoccupations. A final year student said that it was difficult to trace him even after classes as Kar was usually in the dean's office.

If three months as faculty in-charge is threatening to jeopardise Kar's relations with his subordinates and students, D K Bhonsle said two years as officiating dean of the faculty of Performing Arts had taught him how to ``shuttle between the department and the faculty office''. However, he, too, agreed that one tended to neglect department work for the faculty's.

Despite the emphasis one ended up giving to faculty work, Bhonsle, whose charge has been repeatedly renewed for the past two years, admitted that it could never match a full-time dean's.

The faculties that do have full-time deans are Science, Technology, Medicine, Education and Psychology, Home Science, Management and Social Work. And according to Patel, it is a thankless job, especially when the faculty in question has the largest number of students.

``Very few people will opt for the post in a faculty that is the target of student wrath every year'', he predicted. But that is just the post the MSU authorities are determined to fill. In-charge registrar N Pandya told Express Newsline that the process for replacing the Commerce faculty dean would be initiated in the Syndicate meeting to be held on November 27. ``The process of replacing the Arts dean has already started'', he claimed.

According to V-C Anil Kane, the paucity of full-time deans was ``a very temporary phase''.