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Patna,(BiharTimes): In a major embarrassment to Raj Bhawan a single judge bench of Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathy of the Patna high court on Wednesday quashed the appointment of Arvind Kumar and S K Sinha as VCs of Magadh University (MU) and Veer Kuer Singh University (VKSU) respectively. |
The court rejected their appointment on the plea that the appointments were made by the Governor-cum-Chancellor of the Universities of the state without consulting the state government.
The court ruling came on the writ petition of Professor Pramod Kumar Singh of Department of English, VKSU. The petition sought the court's intervention for appointment of genuinely-reputed scholars on the posts.It submitted that the Chancellor's office neither considered the recommendations of the state government nor consulted it while appointing the two VCs more than 13 months back. Thus it was violation of the Bihar Universities Act of 1976.
Justice Tripathy's order said that the appointments are set aside since there is sufficient material to show that no consultation whatsoever had taken place between the state government and the Chancellor before the notification was issued by the Raj Bhavan.
In fact this was the position taken by the then Human Resources Development minister Hari Narayan Singh last year April. But the office of the Chancellor Debanand Kunwar always maintained that consultation took place with the state government.
The government has been insisting that the appointments be made in consultation with it as provided in Section 10 of the Bihar Universities Act, 1976,Though the present HRD minister P K Shahi, had refrained from commenting immediately on the court order the ruling Janata Dal (United) general scretary, Neeraj Kumar, welcomed the judgement and termed it as the victory of the state government.
With the posts of two more VCs have fallen vacant following the court order, now full time Vice Chancellors have to be appointed in as many as seven universities.
It must be recalled that the state government had a few months back recommended a panel of ten names for appointment as VCs in five universities but the Raj Bhawan instead appointed five acting VCs.
Keeping this in mind the state government tried to amend the Bihar Universities Act and Patna University Act in the recently concluded Budget Session of the State Assembly. The amendments curtail the power of the Chancellor-cum-Governor.But the Governor is yet to give his assent to the Bills passed by both the Houses of the State Assembly.
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