The Madras High Court on Thursday constituted a two-member committee comprising a retired judge of the High Court and a former principal of a government college for women to find out how many of the 254 assistant professors appointed to various government aided colleges run by Pachaiyappa’s Trust between 2013 and 2014 were really eligible to hold the post.
Third Division Bench of Justices R. Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq appointed retired judge B. Gokuldas and former principal of Quaid-e-Millath Government College for Women D. Freeda Gnana Rani to look into the educational qualifications of all 254 appointees and find out how many of them had been appointed irregularly without the requisite qualifications.
The Bench made it clear that the committee shall begin functioning from August 7 and that all requisite documents should be submitted by the appointees before the committee on or before August 19. The Directorate of Collegiate Education (DCE) was directed to render all assistance to the committee and produce details regarding the expected qualifications.
After considering all material, the committee was asked to submit its report before the court in a sealed cover on or before September 27, 2023. It was asked to conduct the exercise independently without reference to a similar exercise undertaken by a court-appointed Interim Administrator of the Trust in 2020 and the DCE in 2022.
The judges said the committee should function on the Pachaiyappa’s College campus at Shenoy Nagar in Chennai and that the trust must provide all facilities such as accommodation, infrastructure and transportation to the committee members apart from the remuneration of ₹2 lakh a month to the retired judge and ₹1 lakh a month to the former principal.
After passing the interim orders on a batch of writ appeals, filed by the Assistant Professors against a single judge’s 2022 order quashing all 254 appointments, the Bench, led by Justice Mahadevan, directed the High Court Registry to list the appeals again for hearing on August 29 when the court would peruse the committee’s report.
While agreeing that the ineligible appointees should be weeded out of the institution, the Division Bench said it was equally important to protect the interests of qualified candidates who had put in 10 years of service. Therefore, it decided to initiate an exercise aimed at identifying the qualified and unqualified individuals.
