Adding to the growing discord between the Tamil Nadu government and Governor R.N. Ravi, the State filed a second petition in the Supreme Court on Thursday accusing Mr. Ravi of causing “impediments” in the appointment of Vice-Chancellors to three major universities.
The petition comes within days of the State government moving the apex court with a plea accusing the Governor of creating a “constitutional deadlock” by inexplicably delaying or even failing to consider and give assent to crucial Bills passed by the Legislature and stymieing day-to-day governance in a way that threatens to bring administration in the State to a grinding halt.
The State, represented by senior advocate P. Wilson and advocate Sabarish Subramanian, has challenged three notifications issued by the Governor on the formation of search-and-selection committees for the appointment of Vice-Chancellors to the Bharathiar University, the Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University and the Madras University.
The petition said the Governor-Chancellor has issued the three notifications, contrary to State laws and State government policy decisions, to nominate “extra statutory persons in search committee panels constituted for shortlisting the names for appointments to the post of Vice-Chancellors of the State universities”.
The government submitted that the Governor-Chancellor, who has been conferred with certain ex-officio functions, “in his usual non-cooperative attitude has been causing impediments and embarrassment in the State government machinery and has been issuing notifications through his Governor’s office for constituting search-and-selection committees unilaterally and contrary to State statutes in order to impose 7.3 (ii) of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulations 2018, which stipulates for at least one member of the committee to be a nominee of the Chairman, UGC”.
The State said the notifications were a “gross and patent violation of the university statutes and government order of January 11, 2021”.
It said the obstacles created by the Governor-Chancellor in the appointment of Vice-Chancellors has “left the universities high-and-dry with no supervision and administrative crunch”. The plea noted that tenures of the previous Vice-Chancellors of the three varsities had “expired long back” — the Bharathiar University in October last year, the Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University in November 2022 and the Madras university in August 2023.
“To add insult to injury, the Governor-Chancellor has openly issued press releases to question the authority of the State government for constituting search committees by following the procedure specified in the university statutes,” the petition noted.
