1 week Ago By A Ragu Raman
Chennai: Four days after the Supreme Court delivered a landmark verdict specifying timeframe for governors to clear Bills sent and resent by the state assemblies, the last legal hurdles in the appointment of vice-chancellors to 10 state universities in Tamil Nadu were removed when the state govt notified all the 10 laws in one go late on Friday night. This is the first time a Bill became a law following the direct approval of the Supreme Court, which invoked Article 142 of the Constitution to ensure complete justice, and cleared the pending Bills from the day they were resubmitted to the TN governor's office. The Bills have been deemed to have been approved by the governor due to this apex court intervention.
These Acts empower the state govt to appoint the vice-chancellors to state universities and also give the govt powers to remove vice-chancellors on the grounds of wilful omission or refusal to carry out the provisions of the law or abuse the powers vested in them. The nomination of members to the senate and syndicate, besides academic councils of universities, will also become the sole prerogative of the state govt henceforth. "History has been made as these are the first Acts of any legislature in India to have taken effect without the signature of the governor or the President but on the strength of the judgment of the Supreme Court," DMK MP and senior advocate P Wilson said.
"All the hurdles to the appointment of vice-chancellors to state universities are now removed. They will be taken to a new level under the chancellorship of the state," he further said. As many as ten of 22 state-funded universities are functioning without vice-chancellors.
An AIADMK era Bill, which seeks to rename the state fisheries university after former chief minister Jayalalithaa is one among the 10 Bills to become an Act. It had been pending for more than four years with the Tamil Nadu governor's office..
