HC stays regularisation of nine BU faculty

In a major setback to the Bangalore University (BU), the High Court has stayed the regularisation of the services of nine faculty members of the varsity.

Justice Anand Byra Reddy stayed the appointment made by the Syndicate on April 13, while hearing a petition by Dr N Sunita and Dr D Paramesha Naik, two guest faculty.

He has ordered issue of emergent notice to the registrar. The petitioners, in their submission, had stated that the appointment was a violation of the University Grant Commission (UGC) guidelines and sought that their appointments be quashed. They submitted the services of these faculty members, appointed in the 10th Plan Period of UGC, could not be either regularised or continued as per the UGC norms.

Pointing out that the aspirants for the posts of assistant professors, even on contract basis, must have passed the National Eligibility Test or State Level Eligibility Test, the petitioners said some of the candidates (respondents) had not passed either of these tests and the appointment was in violation of the ‘Statutes related to creation of teaching posts for various post-graduate departments in BU,’ notified in 2010.

The petitioners submitted that the appointment of these faculty on contract basis could not have been continued beyond 2007 as the 10th Plan Period of the UGC (2002-2007), under which the regularisation was made, had expired in 2007. Even the decision of the Syndicate to regularise their services retrospectively from April 1, 2010, was contrary to the Karnataka Universities Act 2000, they said.

The  faculty appointed are: Meena Kumari, Professor, Political Science; Arun Sri Krishna Rao Vaidya, Reader, UGC Academic Staff College; N Nagaraja, lecturer, Academic Staff College; B C Nagaraja and K L Prakash, lecturers, Environment Sciences; Iqbalunissa, lecturer, Urdu; R Hemavati, lecturer, Electrical Engineering; S Y Surendra Kumar, lecturer, Political Science; Jyoti Venkatesh, lecturer, Foreign Language Studies.