HC allows govt to conduct interviews for professors in Anna University

Hearing a petition seeking to quash advertisement issued by the Principal secretary and Commissioner of technical education for recruitment in 13 colleges of Anna University and regional offices in Coimbatore, Madurai and Tirunelveli, Justice D Hariparanthaman also sought details of the backlog vacancies for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe candidates.

Petitioner R Prabakaran submitted the advertisement would mean restarting a new roster and amount to dereservation and it could not be done without following certain procedures.

In the case of SC/ST, the Higher education secretary should make a proposal for dereservation, giving full justification for such action and should consult the advidravidar and tribal welfare director and secretary to the same department and obtain the comment on each proposal.

After obtaining the comments, the proposal should be placed before the committee of Higher education secretary and  adidravidar welfare secretary for its recommendations. These should be placed before the Minister for final approval.

In the case of Most Backward Class also, the same procedure should be followed. However, the Higher Education secretary and commissioner for technical education had not followed such procedures.

The secretary was not the competent person to decide on dereservation and could not direct the registrar to start 200 point roster system afresh without following the existing roster system maintained in each college, he contended.

The petitioner also sought a stay of all further process pursuance to the advertisement issued on November 8, 2015. He said communal roster registers of all 16 university colleges of engineering are essential documents for the adjudication of the case.

The selection process would begin by the end of December 2015 and should be stayed, he said.