CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has held that private educational institutions affiliated to Anna University have the liberty to retain the original educational certificates of teaching and non-teaching staff, who want to remain in service with the respective institutions. Justice G Jayachandran gave a directive to this effect while quashing a portion of the order dated December 4, 2018 of AU, recently.
The judge was disposing off writ petitions from All India Private Educational Institution Associations by its State general secretary K Palaniappan of Saligramam and another. Though the order was delivered on July 17, it was made available to the parties only last week. Originally, following the orders of the HC in a writ petition and the direction of the AICTE, the university in December last year issued the order directing its member colleges to return all original certificates of the faculty members immediately after verification and not to hold them back.
Petitioner association counsel E Vijayanand submitted that once the faculty members joined the institutions, they are supposed to hand over all original certificates, so that the institutions will be able to produce them whenever the appropriate authorities come for inspection. Further, if original documents are returned immediately after verification while they are in service, there are possibilities of misusing the same by getting employment elsewhere, suppressing the fact that they were in employment with the original institution. Hence, the colleges should be permitted to hold back the original documents of the faculty members in their employment, he added.
The judge noted that in the meanwhile, the AICTE had issued another notification on March 29 2018 regarding withholding of original documents of faculty members. AICTE issued a direction not to retain original certificates who are resigning or leaving from employment. But, it does not include teaching/non-teaching staff who are in service with the educational institutions. The judge said for no reason, the institutions should retain the documents of the faculty members who place their resignation letter to the institutions subject to the condition mentioned in March 29 letter of the AICTE,
What court said
The judge said for no reason, the institutions should retain the documents of the faculty members who place their resignation letter to the institutions subject to the conditions