Bangalore University Registrar B.C. Mylarappa has been ousted from the post with the Karnataka High Court on Wednesday declaring that he is “not entitled to continue even for a day”.
The court said the State government had appointed him without considering any of the adverse material against him, which includes charges of plagiarism and misappropriation of funds.
A Division Bench comprising Justice N. Kumar and Justice V. Suri Appa Rao issued the directions while allowing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition, filed by P.M. Parameshwaramurthy and K.M. Manjunath, complaining that Mr. Mylarappa was not a suitable candidate for the post.
The Bench observed that the government did not look into any of the reports submitted by the expert committees indicting him for plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. The Bench also noted that government records did not contain the recommendation of the university’s Syndicate in 2007 for a CID probe against him for the alleged irregularities, including misappropriation of Rs. 19.58 lakh when he was director of university’s distance education directorate.
The Bench found from the records that a recommendation by the former MLC K. Narahari to appoint Mr. Mylarappa as Registrar, a similar representation by the university employees’ association, his bio-data, certain comments on fixing age limit for registrars of universities, and certain amendments were the only documents that the government had considered while choosing him for the post.
The High Court also pointed out that the K.V. Irniraya committee, which looked into plagiarism charges against one of Mr. Mylarappa’s Ph.D. students, had concluded that Mr. Mylarappa himself indulged in plagiarism. “…it is clear that while the student has lifted material from the two Kannada books of his guide [Mr. Mylarappa], a closer examination shows that the two Kannada books of [the] guide themselves are not original but are verbatim translations of other well-known books and research papers written in English…”
While refusing the plea of Mr. Mylarappa’s counsel for suspending the verdict for two months to enable him to appeal to the Supreme Court, the Bench said that “he is not entitled to continue even for a single day. His appointment ceases to exist on the date of this order.”
