Kannur: The Kerala High Court on Thursday, January 30, set aside the appointment of two assistant professors at Kannur University, citing irregularities in the selection process involving former Vice-Chancellor Prof Gopinath Ravindran on his final day before being ousted by the Supreme Court.

Justice N Nagaresh cancelled the appointments of Dr Sudeep T P and Balakrishnan Padmavathi as assistant professors in the Department of Geography after it was found that the selection committee’s composition had changed midway through the interviews held on November 29 and 30, 2023.

Prof Gopinath, as Vice-Chancellor, chaired the selection committee on the first day of the interview and nominated another professor to head the panel on November 30, 2023, the day the Supreme Court quashed his reappointment.

When the notifications were for a limited number of posts, reconstituting the selection committee midway through the interview proceedings would cause injustice to the candidates, the judge said in his order. "It would also raise concerns of the motive behind the reconstitution of the committee," he said, explaining his reasons for setting aside the appointments.

Dr Sudeep was the first rank holder in the open category, and Balakrishnan Padmavathi, a candidate from JNU without a PhD, picked over six candidates with doctoral degrees.

Dr Sudeep's appointment was "deferred" by the High Court on December 22, 2023, after it was challenged by second-rank holder Dr K B Bindu. He later joined the Department of Geography at Government College, Chittur, in Palakkad, as an assistant professor.

ADVERTISEMENT

Dr Jincy P P challenged Balakrishnan Padmavathi's appointment on January 7, 2024, after he joined duty. So on January 9, 2024, Justice Mohammed Nias C P, in an interim order, said his selection and appointment would be provisional and subject to the result of Dr Jincy's writ petition.

The petitioners were represented by Sr Adv George Poonthottam, Adv Nisha George and Adv Kavya Varma M M.

On June 15, 2022, Kannur University notified two posts of assistant professor in the Department of Geography, one in the open category and one in the scheduled caste category. On July 29, 2023, the university notified two posts of assistant professor in the same department on a tenure basis for five years. One of the posts was in the open category, and Dr Bindu applied for it, too.

A joint selection committee was formed to select candidates for the two notifications and November 29 and 30, 2023, were scheduled to conduct the interviews.

Dr K B Bindu from Thrissur's Mundathicode challenged Dr Sudeep's appointment on two major grounds -- one, his PhD guide, Prof Sachidananda Sinha from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was on the selection committee, in direct conflict with interest; and two, after the Supreme Court quashed his reappointment as Vice Chancellor on November 30, he nominated another professor to stand in as the chairman of the selection committee. "On cessation of office, he had no authority to reconstitute or nominate a person as his substitute," Dr Bindu said in her petition.

Dr Jincy also highlighted the second point in her petition.

ADVERTISEMENT

Kannur University, in its reply, told the court that Prof Gopinath, as the Vice-Chancellor, chaired the selection committee on November 29, 2023, and, on the same day, nominated another professor as chairman of the panel. It said he made the decision while still in office as Vice-Chancellor, after realising he would not be able to sit on the interview panel the next day "because of health reasons, and not after the Supreme Court quashed his reappointment.

As per Clause 5.1 of the UGC's 2018 regulations, the Selection Committee for an assistant professor must be chaired by the Vice-Chancellor or a nominee with at least 10 years of experience as a professor.

The university told the court that the stand-in professor fulfilled the UGC's qualification for chairperson.

Prof Sinha told the court that he was not aware that his student, Dr Sudeep, was a candidate, and apart from him, there were two more subject experts in the seven-member selection committee. So he alone could not have influenced the decisions of the seven members, Prof Sinha told the court.

The court did not find any merit in the allegation of conflict of interest against Prof Sinha. The judgment said that the mere fact that Prof Sinha was the PhD supervisor of the candidate by itself would not vitiate the selection proceedings.

The court also did not agree with the argument that two separate selection committees should have conducted the interviews of the candidates for regular and ad hoc posts because the nature of the work and qualifications were the same.

ADVERTISEMENT

However, the court agreed with the petitioners that changing the composition of the selection committee midway could affect how candidates were assessed.

"If the Vice-Chancellor had any personal or other difficulty in presiding over the Selection Committee proceedings on November 30, 2023, it would have been appropriate to cancel the interview proceedings already held in part and subject all the candidates to appear in a fresh interview proceedings by the reconstituted Committee. The reconstitution of the Selection Committee during the middle of the interview proceedings is highly illegal and arbitrary. Any selection made pursuant thereto cannot stand the scrutiny of law," the order said and set aside the appointments and the rank list. "The university is directed to conduct selection afresh to the posts of assistant professor, as per the earlier notifications," the court said.

The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Onmanorama. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.