The Madras High Court on Wednesday called for records related to nomination of a representative of Madurai Kamaraj University’s (MKU) Syndicate on the search committee that was constituted by the State government for shortlisting names for the post of Vice-Chancellor.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad wanted to peruse the files related to the nominations before taking a decision on a public interest litigation petition which alleged that the Syndicate nominee was actually selected by former Higher Education Secretary.
The petitioner, A. Mahalingam, a resident of Chennai claimed the Syndicate’s nominee to the search committee, constituted after the unceremonious unseating of P.P. Chellathurai, had not been done as per rules.
He alleged that a meeting of the Syndicate was convened hastily on June 14, a public holiday, without giving sufficient time to the members to deliberate and former Bharathidasan University vice chancellor C. Thangamuthu was nominated by the Syndicate at the instance of the then Higher Education Secretary.
Refuting the allegations, Advocate General Vijay Narayan told the court that Mr. Thangamuthu was nominated unanimously by the members of the Syndicate and that none of the rules had been flouted in the process.
