MADURAI: A public interest litigation has been moved before the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court to stay all further proceedings pursuant to an advertisement issued by the Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) on January 27, calling for applications to fill 103 lecturer vacancies.

A Division Bench comprising Justice A. Kulasekaran and Justice S.K. Krishnan directed the university counsel to get instructions from his client and posted the matter to March 8.

The petitioner, S. Chellam, Member, SC/ST Standing Committee, MKU, said, the committee headed by the Vice-Chancellor on February 25, 2004, discussed to fill all the vacancies reserved for SC/STs.

Though there were 51 vacancies in the non-teaching staff category and 27 in the teaching category, none of them could be filled because a case pertaining to the appointments was pending before the principal seat of the Madras High Court in Chennai.

Thereafter, the matter was discussed again in the Standing Committee meeting held on April 7, 2005, and the same reason was adduced for not filling the vacancies, the petitioner added. Claiming that there was no stay order against filling up the vacancies in the non-teaching category, he alleged that the university, however, did not initiate steps to fill those vacancies.

UGC directive

Further, the University Grants Commission too on December 24, 2005, had instructed the MKU to fill 80 per cent of backlog vacancies meant for SC/ST on or before December 31, 2005, he said and added that the order was yet to be complied with.

Now, to the surprise of many, the University had called for applications to fill 103 vacancies for lecturers in various departments by following a roster system.

Since there was no mention about the backlog vacancies meant for SC/ST, the petitioner alleged that the university had merged the backlog vacancies meant for reserved category with the general category.

Hence, he sought for a stay to the proposed appointments until the university authorities dispose of a representation made by him to fill reserved vacancies.

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