Times of
India: Nagpur: Tuesday, June 04, 2019.
In
a setback to Nagpur University (NU) vice-chancellor SP Kane, the governor has
rejected his report which ruled out any action against GS College of Commerce
and Economics principal NY Khandait. A three-member committee had found
Khandait’s appointments as senior college lecturer and principal to be illegal.
Principal
secretary (governor’s office) B Venugopal Reddy directed Kane to take action and
submit an action taken report to the governor. However, Reddy’s letter didn’t
fix any time frame for this.
On
March 19, Kane had given a clean chit to Khandait on the premise that the
complaint was made by insiders after long passage of time even though the
fact-finding committee appointed by the VC himself clearly indicated that the
GS principal’s appointments suffered from legal infirmities.
On
April 25, former GS lecturer Neeraj Vyas again petitioned the governor, who is
chancellor of public universities, stating that continuation of Khandait on the
post was violation of Articles 14 (equality in general) and 16 (equality in
opportunity in public appointments). Vyas also stated that action can be taken
even at the fag end of an employee’s career while citing that the government
had sacked a PDKV VC just 15 days before his tenure was to end.
On
May 8, B Venugopal Reddy wrote to the vice-chancellor asking him to take
appropriate action after taking legal opinion.
Vyas
had made his first petition to the chancellor on March 31, 2018, in which he
had alleged illegality in Khandait’s appointments by the college and university
in 1993. The governor had directed Kane to submit a factual report.
On
June 5, 2018, Kane set up a three-member fact-finding committee headed by
Shrikant Komawar which submitted its report on February 4 this year.
Kane
took over a month to review the 20-page report before forwarding it to the
governor on March 19. After this, Vyas had to wait for another month before a
copy of the report was handed over to him on April 24 in response to his RTI
query.
As
per a notesheet received by Vyas in response to his RTI query, the chancellor
office’s observed that Khandait’s “appointment to the post of senior college
lecturer was not done following due procedure and extant policy for making such
appointments also in regard to his appointment to the post of principal”.
“The
fact-finding committee has found procedural irregularity in grant of approval
to the post of principal of Dr Khandait by the university. Since appointment of
Dr Khandait as lecturer in senior college is irregular, it seems necessary for
the university to take action in the matter,” the notesheet reads.