HC slams varsity HOD for ‘discriminatory refusal’ to re-engage guest faculty

Dehradun: Uttarakhand high court has criticised the head of department of law at Soban Singh Jeena University, Almora, for allegedly declining to re-engage a petitioner as guest faculty in the university. A bench of Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay, while hearing a petition filed by Priyanka, said the action against her was "not only discriminatory but also malicious and vindictive".The petitioner, who had been a guest faculty at the institution for the past few years, had challenged the action impugned against her and approached the high court in July last year. After hearing both sides, HC found that she had been singled out, noting that the dispute was not a routine service matter but an unfair and targeted conduct by the departmental head.The petitioner submitted that she was a witness before the internal complaints committee in a complaint against the HOD, and that despite the committee having given an adverse report against the official, the vice-chancellor was "sitting over it" and did not take any action so far.HC also expressed concern over what it described as "repeated attempts to bypass its earlier directions". On Dec 11, it ruled that the settled position in law is that a temporary worker cannot be replaced by another temporary worker, nor a guest lecturer be replaced by another guest lecturer. Respondents were directed to permit the petitioner to resume duties in her erstwhile post as the guest lecturer in the department of law, on the terms and conditions that were attached to her post earlier.The court on Monday observed that despite several orders passed from time to time, the HOD tried to circumvent them, first by not permitting the petitioner to resume duties and later by not paying her stipend and emoluments on what the court called a "self-manufactured ground" that she had not attended duties regularly. Counsel for the university, CS Rawat, sought two days' time to obtain instructions regarding the status of the inquiry against the HOD and assured the court that its earlier orders in the matter would be complied with.