Sending a strong message to government officials who do not approach contempt of court proceedings with enough seriousness, the Madras High Court on Monday directed Commissioner of Police, Chennai city, to arrest Higher Education Secretary Mangat Ram Sharma and produce him before the court on Wednesday.
Justice N. Kirubakaran ordered issuance of a bailable arrest warrant to the Commissioner since Mr. Sharma had failed to appear before the court despite having received statutory notice in a contempt of court case related to operation of distance eduction centres, through franchisees, by Bharathiar University in Coimbatore.
The judge was enraged over the submission made by a law officer that the Secretary had gone to attend the Syndicate meeting of Tiruvalluvar University in Vellore though it was an admitted fact that he had received the statutory notice as early as on December 5 requiring his presence before the court on Monday.
“It is not as if he was asked to appear before this court on short notice. On December 5, 2018 itself he was served. When that is so, he should have made arrangements to see to it that he appears before this court. Contempt proceedings are serious proceedings and they cannot be taken lightly especially by an higher official.
“This court has every reason to believe that he has deliberately avoided appearance before this court,” the judge observed in his interim order before directing the High Court Registry to issue the arrest warrant forthwith. He, however, recorded the presence of other contemnors and dispense with their presence in the future hearings.
The contempt proceedings had been initiated against Mr. Sharma, Bharathiar University Registrar (in-charge) B. Vanitha and eight Syndicate members at the instance of an association of self-financing colleges.
They were accused of violating orders passed by the court on December 8, 2017 restraining the university from operating distance education centres, through franchisees, outside the State. It was further ordered that no new admissions should be made through such centres from the academic year 2018-19 and only those who had been admitted already should be allowed to continue.
Yet, the Syndicate of the university had, on November 28 this year, passed a resolution to go in for spot admissions to distance education courses for the academic year 2018-19 alone as a special case and hence the present contempt. After going through the resolution, the Judge wondered how could admissions for the academic year 2018-19 be made in the month of November.
Holding that a prima facie case of contempt had been made out, he ordered appearance of all contemnors including the eight Syndicate members who had voted in favour of the resolution. The individuals included suo motu in the contempt petition were Director of Collegiate Education R. Sarumathi and Director of Medical Education A. Edwin Joe.
Director of Technical Education Vivekanandan, Anna University Dean M. Saravana Kumar, Principal of Kamban College of Arts and Science Chinnadurai and three professors of Bhrathiyar University G. Singaravelu, N. Jeyakumar and Ravichandran were among the other contemnors.