CHENNAI: Madras high court on Tuesday took judicial notice of the fact that 14 universities in Tamil Nadu, including the Madras and Anna universities, are functioning without a vice chancellor or a syndicate. The situation has to be remedied, the court said.“If the state govt does not take immediate steps to set right this anomaly, it will directly impact the higher education in Tamil Nadu which includes the students, staff, teachers and retired employees of various colleges,” Justice Anand Venkatesh said.The court made the observation while hearing a batch of contempt of court petitions moved against Annamalai University for delaying payment of pension benefits to eligible pensioners.When the pleas came up for hearing, the petitioners submitted that a practical difficulty is faced by the registrar since Annamalai University does not have a VC and a syndicate and the university is being run by a Convenor Committee appointed by the govt headed by an IAS Officer. Therefore, there is an absolute lack of communication.Recording the submission, the judge said that he had an opportunity to deal with yet another major issue pertaining to the Madras University where almost 500 retired persons were waiting for final settlement for years together and after a prolonged pressure exerted by the court, the amounts were settled to them.There is yet another major issue pertaining to Anna University, and contempt petitions are pending due to non-implementation of the order passed by this court. These contempt petitions pertain to Annamalai University, he added.“The common thread that runs through these universities is the functioning of universities without VC and properly constituted syndicate which presently is functioning with the assistance of temporary registrars and convenor committees,” the court said.The convenor committee headed by an IAS officer, at the best can only be a temporary arrangement and it is virtually impossible for this committee to run the universities and administer the colleges under them, he said.The court then suo motu impleaded the state higher education secretary as a party to the litigations and report further course of action on Nov 17.
