BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court has dismissed two public interest litigations seeking direction to remove Vidyashankar S as vice-chancellor of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). Vidyashankar was appointed as VTU V-C on September 29, 2022.
“In our opinion, the petitioners have not approached the court with ‘clean hands, clean heart and clean objective’. This apart, there is a short unexplained delay on the part of the petitioners in calling in question the appointment to a public office,” a division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Krishna S Dixit said.
The petitions were filed by Prof B Shivaraj, former acting V-C of the University of Mysore, and one Dr K Mahadev. They contended that the search committee was wrongly constituted since two of its members were associated with the VTU and there was no UGC nominee. Also, Vidyashankar lacked requisite qualifications in terms of Section 13 of the VTU Act, they claimed.