4 months ago
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The Madras High Court on Monday wanted to know whether an undertaking can be given to the court that the vice-chancellor for the University of Madras shall not be appointed until the disposal of a case seeking the inclusion of a University of Grants Commission (UGC) nominee in the search panel.
The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy asked Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram to obtain instructions in this regard from Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi, Chancellor of State universities, by Wednesday.
Earlier, the A-G told the court that the Legislative Assembly had passed a Bill for making the Chief Minister as the chancellor of all State universities but the Governor had not given his assent to it. The State government had, therefore, taken the matter to the Supreme Court.
However, since the Governor continues to be the Chancellor, any undertaking with respect to the appointment of the vice-chancellor of the University of Madras could be given only by him, the A-G said, and sought time to get instructions from the Raj Bhavan.
When the Chief Justice wanted to know whether any person was holding the office of the vice-chancellor of the university, the A-G replied in the negative, and said “it was headless.” The law officer also claimed there was no necessity to include UGC nominee in the search panel.
Stating that the Madras University Act, 1923, does not provide for the inclusion of UGC nominee in the panel, he said the recent judgements of the Supreme Court on the issue would bind only upon the universities concerned and not the State government, which constitutes the search panel.
The A-G also relied on a few other verdicts to buttress his submission. Since the public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by advocate B. Jagannath for inclusion of the UGC nominee in the search panel had to be argued at length, the judges wanted to prevent a fait accompli till then.
Appearing on behalf of the petitioner, senior counsel N.L. Rajah insisted on quashing the Government Order issued by the Higher Education Department on September 13 for constituting a three-member search panel comprising the nominees of the Chancellor, the Syndicate and the Senate alone.
The UGC had filed a counter affidavit to the PIL petition accusing the State government of having excluded its nominee from the search panel with a malicious intention, besides attributing political motives behind the exclusion.
