The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday restrained Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) from releasing, until June 4, the list of successful candidates in the ongoing selection process for appointing Associate Professors and Assistant Professors.
Passing interim orders on a public interest litigation (PIL) petition, a Division Bench of Justices R. Karuppiah and V.S. Ravi also directed the university not to issue appointment orders to the selected candidates until the court passed further orders in the case on June 4.
M. Parthasarathi, secretary of the university’s Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Employees’ Welfare Association, had filed the case to quash the entire selection process on the ground that the university had not followed communal roster properly before calling for applications.
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The petitioner’s counsel, G. Thalaimutharasu, claimed that the university had issued the present recruitment notification on January 22 in defiance of interim orders passed by the High Court in a similar case filed last year. That case was still pending in the court, he added.
Refuting the charge, the counsel for the MKU, Isaac Mohanlal, contended that the interim order passed last year had nothing to do with the notification issued this year. He accused the petitioner of having approached the court at the eleventh hour with a mala fide intention of stalling the recruitment process.
Stating that the university had not deviated from any of the norms stipulated by the State government for filling up vacancies in teaching posts, he said there was an urgent need to fill up the vacancies before the commencement of the academic year in the second week of June.
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