Justice N Anand Venkatesh, recently, while allowing a batch of petitions filed by the teaching faculties concerned, who were appointed as assistant professors in 2016 with the condition that their services should be regularised after the end of the five-year tenure.
CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has ordered the Bharathiar University to regularise the services of the assistant professors who were appointed under the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) XII plan with all the attendant service benefits.
The orders were passed by Justice N Anand Venkatesh, recently, while allowing a batch of petitions filed by the teaching faculties concerned, who were appointed as assistant professors in 2016 with the condition that their services should be regularised after the end of the five-year tenure.
The appointments were caught entangled in litigations with criminal cases registered against the then Vice Chancellor A Ganapathy for committing irregularities in the recruitment. The appointees approached the court in 2022 when they were not regularised after the end of the five-year tenure.
Advocate Kavitha Rameshwar, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that the court directed the university to consider their applications for regularisation but the registrar refused citing the criminal case and other reasons.
Justice Venkatesh, in his order, noted that the court was of the considered view that the services of the petitioners “cannot be continuously kept under the Damocles’ Sword”.“That apart, this court finds there is no bar in regularising the services of the petitioners in view of the fact that the decisions (for recruitment) were not the unilateral decisions of the V-C but were taken by the Syndicate. Therefore, the pending criminal case by itself will not stand in the way of the petitioners,” he reasoned. The judge held that the alleged irregularities “will not vitiate the very appointment” because the syndicate has ratified all the appointments.
Quashing the 2022 orders of the registrar, the judge ordered that the petitioners shall be regularised with all attendant benefits within six weeks and the same will be subject to the final outcome of the pending criminal case and any court orders in future.
