NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday cancelled the appointment of vice chancellor of Dr A P J Abdul Kalam Technical University. The verdict was pronounced by a bench led by Justice M R Shah. The court has cancelled the appointment of Rajasree M S. The verdict was on a plea filed in the court stating that the appointment of VC was not in accordance with UGC norms. The plaintiff is P S Sreejith, former dean of Kochi University of Science and Technology.

Sreejith filed the plea based on the recent judgment of the Supreme Court that if the UGC rules are approved, the university is bound to implement them. Instead of deputing a panel as per UGC norms for the appointment, only the name of Dr Rajasree was given. The court had earlier observed that this was not according to the norms. Following this, the appointment was cancelled today.

The Governor issued an order appointing Dr Rajasree M S as the vice chancellor of the technical university on February 2, 2019. However, Sreejith approached the court stating that there were three violations in this appointment. The formation of the search committee to appoint the vice-chancellor was illegal. Persons connected to education sector should be appointed to the search committee and instead, the chief secretary was made a member of the panel. Counsel for the petitioner argued that he was not from the field of education.

Lawyers Dr Amit George and Muhammed Saddique, who appeared for Sreejith, argued that only the name of Dr Rajasree was included in the search committee instead of the panel, as AICTE nominee. The lawyers of the state government and Rajasree argued that her appointment was according to section 13 of the Technical University appointment of 2015.