The Allahabad High Court has struck down an order terminating the contract of Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey as a visiting faculty member by the IIT-Banaras Hindu University, holding that the ex-parte action on charges like anti-national activities which have “serious apersions” violated “the principle of natural justice.”
A Division Bench comprising Justices V.K. Shukla and Mahesh Chandra Tripathi on Friday allowed the petition filed by Mr. Pandey, who had challenged the order dated January 6, 2016 terminating his contract whereby he had been appointed a “Visiting Professor” in the Department of Chemical Engineering.
His tenure was to come to an end on July 30 this year.
“Guilty of cyber crime” In the impugned order, Mr. Pandey, who is also a Gandhian activist, was told that the decision to terminate his contract was taken at a meeting of the Board of Governors of IIT (BHU) which held him guilty of “cyber crime” and acting “against national interest“.
‘Naxal sympathiser’ The Board of Governors had taken cognisance of the letter from a student of political science at BHU, who had charged Mr. Pandey with “involvement in political activities and being an active sympathiser of Naxalites.”
Mr. Pandey’s counsel Rahul Mishra argued that “decision in question has been taken by the authorities concerned to silence the voice of the petitioner merely because distinctive ideology was practiced by him.”
Quashing the order, the court remarked that “the case in hand is not a termination simpliciter, rather it is punitive/stigmatic order” in which “heavy words such as commission of cyber crime and acting against national interest have been loosely used.”
