Priya Varghese lacks actual teaching experience: Kerala High Court

The court directed the scrutiny committee of the university to reconsider Priya’s credentials and decide whether her name should be on the rank list.
Priya Varghese
Priya Varghese

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court on Thursday found that Priya Varghese, wife of chief minister’s private secretary K K Ragesh, does not have the actual teaching experience for being included in the rank list for the post of associate professor in Malayalam at Kannur University.

The court directed the scrutiny committee of the university to reconsider Priya’s credentials and decide whether her name should be on the rank list. “I allow the writ petition and direct the competent authority of the university to reconsider the credentials of Priya Varghese and decide whether she should continue in the rank list. On such inquiry be completed and the rank list sufficiently modified further action to make appointments can be taken forward,” Justice Devan Ramachandran said.

The court issued the order while allowing a petition filed by Joseph Scaria of Changanassery SB College, the second rank holder, seeking to rework the rank list after removing Priya. The court said that experience of teaching as specified in the UGC Regulation has to be 0f actual teaching, and not something that can be inferred or construed either by operation of law or on the strength of circulars or executive orders.

The post of an associate professor is an extremely vital and important one, it was certainly justified for the UGC to provide that only a person with requisite actual teaching experience could go to that stage. The UGC clearly stipulated that a person ought to have had real teaching experience so as to maintain the excellence and integrity of the higher education system, the court said. In that context, teaching experience can only be a real fact and not fiction or an inference. Some of the various spells of teaching experience claimed by Priya Varghese “cannot find favour in law”.

Court objects to claims on teaching experience

“In this case, the scrutiny committee proceeded on certain assumptions which they thought to be true, particularly with respect to the services claimed by Priya Varghese while engaging in full-time research and discharging duties as a Director of Student Services and or the coordinator of the National Service Scheme.

Certainly, such activities would go to the promotion of the growth of a person as a good teacher, but that by itself would not be sufficient in the absence of requisite experience of teaching,” the court said. “What would be required is a ‘felicitous mix of both’, so that a teacher is able to guide their children not only in academics but also in community service, which is an absolute must in the given times,” said the court.

Claims fall flat
The court did not find force in the argument of Priya Varghese that the time spent on obtaining a PhD degree under the Faculty Development Programme (FDP), the period of deputation in the post of Director of Student Services, the service rendered on a temporary/ad hoc/contract basis as a lecturer in Malayalam in the Kannur BEd Centre, the coordinator of NSS, and the assistant director at the Kerala Bhasha Institute could be trea-ted as teaching experience.

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