Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda VC has resigned, HC told

Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda's (MSUB) vice-chancellor Vijay Kumar Srivastava has resigned from the post, a month before the end of his tenure, the Gujarat High Court was told on Wednesday while hearing a PIL challenging his appointment.

Srivastava's lawyer Mrugen Purohit informed the division bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Pranav Trivedi that the vice-chancellor tendered his resignation to the Gujarat additional chief secretary on Tuesday evening.

Advocate-general Kamal Trivedi told the court that the resignation was received and likely to be accepted by Thursday after someone is assigned charge as the VC.

With the status of Srivastava's resignation letter, which has to be accepted by the governor, likely to be known on Wednesday, the court kept the matter for the next hearing on Thursday, the petitioner's lawyer Baiju Joshi said.

The petition challenging Srivastava's appointment as VC was filed by MSUB professor of the department of education, Satish Pathak. Pathak had demanded Srivastava's ouster claiming that his appointment amounted to a violation of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act.

Srivastava was appointed MSUB VC on 10 February 2022, after a search committee recommended three names to the state government. His tenure was supposed to end on 8 February this year.

The petitioner alleged that Srivastava had not served in colleges or universities of national importance listed by the UGC, and also lacked the mandatory 10-year experience to work in a reputable research and/or academic administrative organisation with proven academic leadership.

Regulation 7.3 of the UGC Act requires a person to be appointed as vice chancellor to possess experience as a professor for a minimum of 10 years in a university or 10 years of experience in a reputed research and/or academic administration organisation, it said.

Instead of producing proof of academic leadership, Professor Srivastava only submitted a bio-data which served as the sole basis on which the search committee made his appointment, the petition stated.

Even the search committee was not constituted in accordance with the UGC Act, it said.

The vice chancellor also presented himself as the first author of various research papers mentioned in his bio-data despite being the second or third author of these papers, the petition stated.

It further claimed that Srivastava had not maintained "the highest level of integrity and morals" in disclosing the information and is therefore not eligible and qualified to become VC of MSU.

The petition stated that Srivastava's bio-data submitted before the search committee mentioned that he had served as the dean and HoD of Sciences at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (now PDEU) even though he was merely an associate professor.

Similarly, he posed as having served Kamdhenu University as a professor and associate director of research, but the annual report of the university shows the post being held by someone else, it said.

"In the present case, there is no iota of evidence that the (VC) has worked as a professor for 10 years or in the cadre and the pay-scale of the professor as per the norms of UGC, and therefore, he is neither eligible nor qualified to hold the post of vice-chancellor in reputed university like the M.S. University of Baroda," it said.