The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has set aside a single bench order that had held as invalid the appointment of G. Balasubramanian as Vice-Chancellor of Tamil University, Thanjavur.
A single bench had held that the Search Committee was constituted in violation of UGC regulations and provisions of Tamil University Act, that said that persons nominated to the committee should not be a member of any of the authorities of the University. The judge had directed the State and the UGC to reconstitute the Search Committee. Preferring an appeal against the order, Balasubramanian said that two members nominated to the Search Committee were formerly associated and were not present authorities of the University.
Allowing the appeal filed by Balasubramanian, a Division Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and S. Ananthi observed that no materials were produced against the members of the Search Committee to prove any bias.
The judges said that they did not find any legal malice in existence. The assessment made by the committee was unbiased and done on a comparative basis. Such assessment cannot be questioned in the absence of any concrete material.
The court said that it did not find any merit on the objections made on the constitution of the committee. The words ‘shall not be connected with the University or College or recognised institution of the University’ cannot be stretched by any imagination to mean that an ex-Syndicate member and ex-Vice Chancellor would be disqualified from the member of the Search Committee.
