Bharathiar university heads summoned for violating order

Justice N Kirubakaran on wondering whether court orders were so ineffective to be violated or were they paper orders to be ignored, said “This court, prima facie, is of the opinion that it is against the public interest and against the standards of education, apart from committing contempt of court order. Hence, this court grants an order of interim stay of the operation of the resolution passed approving agenda No 303 dated November 28, 2018 passed by the University Syndicate.”

Further, issuing notice of appearance on January 7, 2019 to the Registrar (in-charge), Chairman, Convener of vice-chancellor committee and eight syndicate members including R Sarumathi, Director, Collegiate Education, A Edwin Joe, Director of Medical Education and Vivekanandan, Director, Technical Education who voted in favour of the resolution on January 7, 2019, Justice Kirubakaran said “It is not clear as to how the registrar could permit the study centres to admit students in the middle of the academic year viz., at the fag end of November 2018, especially when the academic year starts in June 2018.”

Observing that such a move would also prima facie show that without even conducting classes, admission applications are permitted to be received from the candidates for the academic year 2018-19 and to allow them to write the examination along with second and third-year candidates, the Judge said “It would only show that the vice-chancellor is not interested in standards of education, otherwise they would not have allowed the study centres to admit the students either in the middle or end of the academic year and permit the students to write the examination without conducting classes, which goes against public interest.”

It may be noted that the University despite giving an undertaking to the court that it will not operate distance education centres which led the December 8 order last year, had passed a resolution permitting spot admission at School of Distance Education (SDE), Centre for Participatory Programmes (CPP) and Centre of Collaboration of Industries and Institutions (CCII) to complete the admission process for 2018-2019 alone as a special case.

The contempt plea was moved by Association of Self Financing Arts, Science and Management Colleges ofTamil Nadu.