Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar greets CM Vijayan during the latter’s visit to the Raj Bhavan (File photo: PTI)
NEW DELHI: As the Kerala governor, also the chancellor of state universities, is not taking a decision on the report of the SC-appointed committee on appointment of vice-chancellors, Supreme Court said on Friday that the chancellor cannot sit on the report and asked him to take a decision within a week.A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala & K V Viswanathan said the panel headed by Justice (retd) Sudhanshu Dhulia was appointed after state govt & governor agreed to its formation,& now, he is obliged to act on the report filed. The lawyer, appearing for the governor, told the bench he received the report but the entire record has not been sent by the state govt. For Kerala, senior advocate Jaideep Gupta, however, informed the bench that the entire record has already been sent to the office of the chancellor.”We fail to understand why non-receipt of the record is coming in the way of looking into the report filed by the committee. In such circumstances, we now expect the learned chancellor to take an appropriate decision in accordance with the report of the committee. We may remind one and all that the committee was appointed with the concurrence of both the parties,” the bench said in its order.SC passed the order after Gupta mentioned that the chancellor was not taking a decision and sought the court’s intervention. The bench posted the hearing to next week. “It is expected of the learned chancellor to now look into the report filed by the committee… and proceed further in the matter accordingly,” the bench said.
