The Madras High Court was informed on Tuesday that former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha had decided against continuing in the search committee for recommending a panel of three names for the post of vice-chancellor of Anna University as a case had been filed against the induction of another member in the committee.
Advocate-General Vijay Narayan told the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar that he had received information about Mr. Justice Lodha’s decision and that it was very unfortunate that an eminent personality like him did not want to continue in the search panel due to hurdles created through filing of cases.
Though the judges had decided to pass orders on Tuesday in the public interest litigation petition filed against the induction of former IIT-Kanpur Director K. Anantha Padmanabhan in the committee, they stopped short of doing so after coming across a document which controverted the stand of the government on his induction.
The PIL petitioner P. Uchimakali, State Secretary of Students Federation of India (SFI), had challenged the induction mainly on the ground that Mr. Padmanabhan had been serving as a Professor of Eminence in the university since November 2015, and hence, he could not be made a search committee member in view of a bar under the Anna University Act of 1978.
However, denying the contention, the Advocate-General told the court on Friday that Mr. Padmanabhan had resigned from the post of Professor of Eminence on April 13 and his resignation was accepted by the university on May 22.
It was only thereafter that he was inducted in the search committee as the Syndicate’s nominee on June 16.
Discrepancy in papers
On perusing the documents related to the case on Tuesday, the judges found a letter written by Mr. Padmanabhan to the university on August 18 expressing his willingness to guide a research scholar. In that letter, he had stated to have resigned from the post of Professor of Eminence “consequent” to his appointment as a member of the Search Committee.
When the judges wanted to know which document should the court believe, the A-G said the statement in the letter was a mistake.
Refusing to buy the argument, Mr. Justice Sundar pointed out that the author was a professor and not an ordinary man.
“Unfortunately, he is not a professor in English,” the A-G replied and tried to persuade the court that it was just a grammatical error.
He went on to state that the court should ignore the letter when it does not doubt the genuineness of the resignation letter as well as the acceptance letter produced by the university.
Immediately, the Chief Justice intervened to point out that the resignation letter was not stamped whereas the August 18 letter to the university had been stamped.
“The letter of resignation does not have a stamp at least in the photocopy before us,” the CJ said. Later, the judges adjourned further hearing on the case to Wednesday for production of the original documents.