Following annulment, all eyes on Syndicate meeting

Following the decision of the State government to annul the illegal appointments of staff members of University of Mysore (UoM) made in 2006-07, all eyes are on the Syndicate meeting of the varsity, which has been convened on Monday.

According to sources, one of the agendas of the meeting is declaring the Probationary Period (PP) of the employees, whose appointment has now been annulled. Such a declaration in the varsity Syndicate, sources said would jeopardise the State government order, resulting in several legal complications to implement the same.

According to regulations, PP of an employee, appointed to the varsity should be declared within three years after the appointments are made. However, PP of the employees, whose appointment has now been annulled, had not been declared, even after seven years. Several persons appointed during 2006-07 had approached the High Court of Karnataka, seeking its intervention to declare PP.

K S Rangappa, Vice-Chancellor, University of Mysore confirmed that declaration of PP was one of the agendas of the Syndicate meeting. “We have directions from the High Court of Karnataka to declare the PP of persons appointed in 2006-07, by June 25. That is why a syndicate meeting has been convened on June 23,” he said. The instructions of the High Court, was in relation to the case of C Basavaraju, former Registrar of the varsity, whose appointment as Registrar was annulled by the High Court, as he was appointed to the post before his PP was declared.

Letter

Rangappa added that he had also written to the State government recently, that the varsity would declare the PP of the employees, if the varsity did not receive any directions from the Higher Education department. He reiterated that the varsity was yet to receive the government order dated June 18. “If we do not get the orders of annulment by Monday, we will have to follow High Court directions,” he said.

It can be recalled that several incumbent legislators and ministers in the present government, including Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, had made repeated demands that the appointments be annulled, a few years back.

With the employees said to move the court, it will be interesting to see whether the government will stand its ground.

Chamarajanagar MP, R Dhruvanarayan, who was among the petitioners, when contacted, said that he would seek legal advice on taking action against the former vice-chancellor, J Shashidar Prasad, under whose tenure the illegal appointments were made. He said that meritorious candidates were ignored during the appointment process. A system should come up to streamline the process of appointment of professors and lecturers, so that such illegalities could be avoided in the future, he added.