CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has sought the Madras High Court to permit it to appoint vice chancellors to the state-run universities since the university amendment acts are in force owing to an order of the Supreme Court which vacated the interim stay granted by a vacation bench of the high court against such amendment acts.
The submission was made by Advocate General Vijay Narayan on Wednesday before the first bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan on the public interest litigation filed by advocate T Venkatachalapathy, seeking to quash the amendment acts ,and the one by P Bhaskar praying for speedy appointment of the V-Cs.“Initially, there was a stay on all the amendment acts. It was granted by a vacation court last year. The state took up the matter to the Supreme Court which stayed the order of vacation bench,” the AG noted.
He pointed out that the state is not able to make the appointments because of an undertaking given before the Supreme Court that it will not do such appointments until the matter is decided.
“The question is whether our legislation is valid or not. If our legislation is valid, a search committee has to be constituted in accordance with the UGC regulations with a UGC nominee.
Once the search committee makes recommendations of three names, then the question is who makes the final appointment. The amendments say the state government has to make the appointments,” the AG said.The bench said it will consider all the aspects and pass orders.
