HYDERABAD: High Court annuls 2014 Telangana University faculty appointments
HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court has set aside the 2014 recruitment of teaching staff at Telangana University, ruling that the appointments were made in violation of regulations.
The judgment came in response to a petition filed on February 22, 2013, by the Contract Faculty Association (Academic Consultants Association), challenging irregularities in the recruitment process. Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka delivered the verdict recently, declaring the 2012 recruitment notification invalid and cancelling all appointments made under it.
Roster irregularities cited in recruitment
The court observed that posts not listed in the 2012 notification were included, and required posts were excluded, leading to changes in the roster points for various subjects. The university had appointed 53 faculty members based on the disputed notification, 45 of whom are still serving.
Under Government Order 420, issued when the university was established in 2006, arts and science groups were to be treated separately with a running roster applied to all subjects alphabetically. However, faculty recruitment required the Executive Council’s (EC) prior approval, which was not obtained in this case.
University bypassed EC approval and misapplied course pattern
The 20th Executive Council, in its meeting on April 27, 2012, decided to discontinue five-year integrated courses and introduce two-year postgraduate programmes MA (Economics) and MSc (Pharmaceutical Chemistry). These new courses required a 1:2:4 staffing pattern (professor, associate professor, assistant professor) instead of the 1:3:7 pattern used for integrated courses.
Despite discontinuing the integrated courses, the university retained them in the 2012 notification, showing posts for non-existent programmes and misrepresenting the pattern as 1:3:7. This altered the roster points of other departments.
In one instance, an assistant professor post in the Botany Department, vacant due to a death in May 2012, was not included in the notification. The court found that such omissions and misrepresentations directly affected the roster system’s legality.
Appointments cancelled; new notification allowed
The court ruled that since the two integrated courses had been discontinued before the notification’s release on May 25, 2012, including them was misleading and invalidated the entire notification. It struck down the 2014 appointments made under it but clarified that the university could issue a fresh notification in accordance with the law.
