Madras High Court imposes Rs 5,000 cost on student

Chennai: Pulling up a student for attempting to misuse the court’s jurisdiction, the Madras high court has dismissed his petition, with costs of Rs 5,000.

The petition sought a direction to Madras University to reconstitute a search committee for selecting the university vice chancellor.

A Division Bench comprising the Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M.M. Sundresh dismissed the PIL from J. Alex alias John Alexander, studying Master of online Journalism in Madras University, which also sought to quash a G.O. of January 7 of the higher education department.

According to petitioner, P.N. Veda Narayanan, retired Vigilance Commissioner, R. Balasubramanian, director, faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University, and R. Surendira Prasad, (former member of Syndicate, Madras University) were nominated to the Search Committee.

Among them, Surendira Prasad at no point of time in his career ever held a full-time position as a teacher, researcher or administrative head of a reputed higher education institution. He was only now starting to do research.  

Therefore, the search committee appointed was not in accordance with UGC regulations, he added. The bench said it was unfortunate to note that a student of the university was seeking to misuse the jurisdiction of this court in PIL.  

“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 last year. This is now another endeavour to raise the same issue again under the garb of a PIL.”

The bench said, “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 he persisted in raising the contentions. Even on merit, we do not find any case made out by the petitioner.”