The Supreme Court on Friday stayed an order of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, quashing the appointment of Kalyani Mathivanan as Vice-Chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University.
After hearing senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, who appeared for Ms. Kalyani, a Bench of Justices S.J. Mukhopadhaya and Ranjan Gogoi issued notice to the respondents, including the petitioner who got the appointment quashed.
Ms. Kalyani said that since 1965, Madurai Kamaraj University, like every other university in Tamil Nadu, had prescribed no qualification for appointment as Vice-Chancellor, going instead by the wisdom of the Chancellor and the experience of the search committee. The UGC Regulations, introduced in 2010, upset the existing mechanism, affecting the federal structure of the Constitution.
She said she was the first woman to have obtained Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.) in Tamil Nadu and had 31 years of teaching at Ethiraj College, affiliated to Madras University. The perverse interpretation in the June 26 judgment disqualified every college teacher in the State, however qualified he or she might be, from applying for Vice-Chancellor's post. This finding was based on the erroneous presumption that colleges had posts of professors, when in fact there were no such posts in the State colleges. However, she had held posts equivalent to that of a professor with both Ph. D and D. Litt for over 10 years.
She said the Madras High Court had taken a view different from those of the High Courts of Bombay, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, holding that the UGC Regulations, 2010, were binding on State universities, especially Regulation 7.3.0 that laid down the qualifications for a Vice-Chancellor. Contending that she was under a cloud for no fault of hers, she prayed the order be quashed till the appeal was disposed of.
