HC pulls up student

Madras High Court today pulled up a Madras University Student for attempting to misuse the jurisdiction of the court and imposed a cost of Rs 5,000 besides dimssing his PIL, which sought a direction to the University to reconstitute a search committee for selection of Vice Chancellor.
Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M M Sundresh dismissed the PIL by J Alex alias John Alexander, student of Master of on-line Journalism, who also sought to quash a G.O dated January 7 of the Higher Education department.
According to petitioner, P N Veda Narayanan, a retired Vigilance and Department Commissioner, R Balasubramanian, Director, Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University and R Surendira Prasad, (former member of Syndicate, University of Madras) were nominated to the Search Committee.

He contended that Surendira Prasad at no point of time in his career ever held a full time position as a teacher, researcher or administrative head of the institution.
Prasad was now starting to do research as a student. Therefore, the search committee appointed by the government was not in accordance with the UGC regulations, he submitted.
The bench said it was unfortunate to note that a student of the University was seeking to misuse the jurisdiction of the court in PIL seeking to assail the composition of the search committee formulated for selection of the Vice Chancellor alleging that it was not in accordance with UGC regulations.

"In our view, the petitioner has clearly either been a set up or has deliberately concealed the issue that the single judge of this court has examined the same very issue at the behest of the Madras University Teachers' Association and those petitions were dismissed on December 18,2015", the court said.

"This is now another endeavour to raise the same issue again under the garb of a PIL. We have also grave doubts as to how the petitioner can question and raise the issue as a PIL. We even pointed out to the petitioner appearing in person the said fact, but the petitioner persisted in raising the contentions. Even on merit, we do not find any case made out by the petitioner."

"Sunredira Prasad is a full time non-stipendiary Ph.D. Research Scholar, who is not getting any monetary benefits from the University. Therefore, the contention sought to be raised that he is a student deserves to be rejected", the court said.
"The petitioner has miserably failed to point out any violation of the provisions contained in the Madras University Act, the bench added.