Chennai: A public interest litigation has been filed in Madras high court to direct the state government to fill up posts of vice chancellors of Anna University, University of Madras and Madurai Kamaraj University.
When the PIL filed by Change India represented by its director A. Narayanan came up for hearing before a division bench comprising Justices R. Mahadevan and M. Govindaraj on Thursday, government pleader M.K. Subramaniam took notice for the state chief secretary and higher education secretary.
The bench posted after summer vacation, further hearing of the petition, which sought a direction to the state government to immediately bring out specific enforceable norms of a fixed time frame to complete the process of appointment of a vice chancellor of any state university, so that there is no discontinuity or disruption in the effective functioning in order to protect the student community and higher education.
According to Narayanan, even though the high court had made recommendations to the government in good faith, the latter has not bothered to amend statutes of public universities in conformity with UGC regulations. Till date, the state government continues to maintain the same recalcitrant attitude by not adopting UGC norms in state universities. Public universities in TN were steadily losing their pre-eminence on account of several alleged scams linked to corruption, nepotism by former vice chancellors.
