Madras High Court stays TN amendments on V-C appointments, cites unconstitutionality
CHENNAI: A vacation bench of the Madras High Court, which temporarily stayed the operation of the 10 amendment Acts that took away the powers to appoint vice-chancellors (V-C) to state-run universities from Governor-Chancellor, in its order, reasoned that it cannot 'shut its eyes on the unconstitutionality of the Acts'.
The 10 Acts were granted 'deemed assent' by the Supreme Court on April 8 in its verdict in the case filed by the Tamil Nadu government against Governor R N Ravi, following which the state government notified the Acts on April 11.
The bench passed the interim orders based on the petitions filed by a BJP functionary and advocate K Venkatachalapathy, whose main contention was that the amendments were repugnant to Regulation 7.3 of the UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges, 2018, dealing with appointment of V-Cs.
In its order, the bench of justices G R Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan said there was no legal hurdle for the high court to subject the amendment Acts to judicial review since the SC has not tested the constitutionality of the legislations in its judgment. Moreover, the bench observed that there is no stay on the applicability of the particular UGC regulation.
'The unconstitutionality and repugnancy vitiating the impugned amendment Acts is so glaring and obvious that we cannot shut our eyes. We are convinced the amendments are ex-facie unconstitutional. If an unconstitutional process is allowed to proceed, it would cause irreparable injury and public interest would suffer,' the bench said.
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