Bhopal: The Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court pulled up Sagar’s Dr Hari Singh Gour Central University and said that the university had shown “complete disregard for the rule of law and violated legal principles and administrative fairness” by appointing 157 assistant professors against 82 sanctioned posts.
₹5 lakh fine on the universit” title=”A single bench of Justice Vivek Jain imposed a ₹5 lakh fine on the universit” />A single bench of Justice Vivek Jain imposed a ₹5 lakh fine on the university and said, “It is found to have acted with utter illegality in the matter, therefore, appropriate cost needs to be imposed upon the university in defeating the rights of the left out candidates and trying to protect and save illegally selected candidates. As against 82 posts advertised, 157 appointments have been made in 2013. The university would be at liberty to recover that cost from the persons who have participated in the impugned executive committee meeting.”
Odisha-based activist Deepak Gupta had filed a petition stating that the university illegally appointed assistant professors in 2013 and challenged the minutes of the meeting of the executive council of the university for passing a resolution in 2022 to validate the appointments. “It is highly impermissible in law and amounts to granting undue benefits to the assistant professors, who are illegally appointed in the University without following any procedure known to law,” the petition read.
The court order said, “It seems the university does not respect rule of law at all and has decided to disregard all legal principles and fairness in administrative action and is regarding its own stand before this court, order of this court, result of visitorial inquiry, advice of the visitor and its own acceptance of the advice, as waste papers and subordinate to the later acquired wisdom of the executive council, and suddenly take U-turn in the year 2023 and say that all the selections are valid and legal and have been made after rigorous scrutiny and selection.”
“Such an action by the university cannot be given stamp of approval by this court because if such a decision of the executive council is given stamp of approval it would only perpetuate the illegality and nothing else and would create heart-burn and violate legal rights of the candidates who have been short-changed by the university by adopting to illegal process of selection,” the order added.
“The university has been defending its case on legal technicalities like the question of delay, locus, impleadment, power of visitor, etc… No technicality can wipe out the illegalities,” it said.
Pulling up the university, the court said, “The university, for reasons best known to it, does not want to take corrective action and wants to perpetuate the illegality in a most wanton, illegal and shameless manner. The impugned decision taken in the executive council meeting in 2022 is set aside. The process of recruitment be carried out and completed within a period of three months. If the process is not completed within three months, then the assistant professors appointed in the year 2013 in pursuance to the process shall cease to hold their post w.e.f. 15.11.2025. If the process is completed prior to that date, then only those assistant professors will be retained who are found eligible in re-assessment and re-interviews to be conducted as per decision of the executive council taken in its meeting in February 2020.”
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