NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has ordered that the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cannot cancel the PhD course of a candidate citing “there is no supervisor available to provide guidance” and cannot ask the candidate to “find himself a supervisor”.
Justice C Hari Shankar observed that the university’s direction to a research fellow to find himself a supervisor and obtain consent from them to supervise his research, “was in the teeth (contradictory) of Ordinance 6.1 and is, consequently, illegal.”
As per the case, Nazar Mohammad Mohaideen S, a PhD scholar at JNU’s Special Centre for Molecular Medicine (SCMM). However, the supervisor, Professor Shailja Singh refused to supervise the doctoral candidate, citing he was insincere in performing his assignments and was visiting the lab at late hours with strangers, which was a security threat.
Later, the university informed Mohaideen that since there is no other person available to supervise his course, he cannot continue as a research scholar at the institute.
The candidate approached the high court following this intimation from the university.
While allowing his plea, the high court also said “the relief granted is strictly conditional to the petitioner conducting himself in accordance with the discipline of JNU, and not providing any legitimate ground for complaint by the newly appointed supervisor.”
“Any such conduct or behaviour on the petitioner’s part, provided, of course, that it is proved by cogent material, would result, ipso facto, in vacation of the relief granted by this judgement, and would revive the impugned order dated 4 October 2023,” the high court stated.
The court noted that the petitioner has also agreed to be supervised by Prof Shailja Singh herself and undertakes to ensure that there would be no cause for any grievance to be raised by her in future insofar as the conduct of the petitioner is concerned.