The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has urged the Madras High Court to vacate an interim order passed by it on March 13 directing the Ministry to maintain status quo in so far as the process for selection of director for Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (Jipmer) in Puducherry was concerned.
Justice T. Raja had passed the order on a writ petition filed by six senior faculty members — R. Raveendran, Gopal Krushna Pal, Ashok S. Badhe, Abdoul Hamide, Surender Kumar and Sunil K. Narayan — alleging various irregularities in the constitution of screening committee as well as procedures adopted for short-listing candidates.
However, in an affidavit, filed now through Central government Standing Counsel M.T. Arunan, the Ministry denied all the allegations levelled by the petitioners and contended that the selection process had been carried out in consonance with well-laid down procedures to be followed while appointing directors to reputed medical institutions. The affidavit filed by Under Secretary Sunil Kumar Gupta stated that Jipmer was an autonomous institute under the Ministry and its director must be appointed after approval by the institute as per Section 11(1) of the JIPMER Act of 2008. However, such appointment required the prior approval of the Centre in compliance with the rules framed under the Act.
Further, pointing out that the appointment to the post of Director of Jipmer fell within the purview of the Appointment Committee of Cabinet (ACC) on account of the pay scale under which it falls. As per the norms of Department of Personnel and Training, a search-cum-selection committee constituted by the Ministry should recommend a panel of names to the ACC.
The appointment order should be issued by the institute after the decision of ACC. In so far as the present case was concerned, a screening committee comprising eminent people was constituted for scrutinising the applications and submitting a report to the search-cum-selection committee chaired by the Union Health Secretary.
Only eight applications, including that of the six writ petitioners, were received for the post. The petitioners had chosen to file a writ petition alleging favouritism being shown to another applicant V.S. Negi. The prime reason for such an allegation was that Jipmer had decided to give weightage to research articles published in American indexing service PubMed alone.
Stating that there was nothing wrong in such insistence, the Ministry said the quality of a research paper could be judged by the quality of the journal in which it was published. “It is a fact known to everyone in medical and research field that the quality of research publication will be high if it is published in PubMed indexed journals,” it added.
