Patna, May 4: Patna High Court today quashed the appointment of two vice-chancellors on the ground that the chancellor did not follow the mandatory procedure of consulting the state government before filling the posts.

The single judge bench of Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi held illegal the appointment of Arvind Kumar and Subhash Prasad Sinha as vice-chancellors of Magadh University in Bodhgaya and Veer Kuer Singh University in Ara, respectively. Both were appointed by chancellor Devanand Konwar, the governor of Bihar.

“There is sufficiency of material to show from various file notings and letters sent by the state to the office of (the) chancellor that there was no occasion for having any consultation on the issue of appointment of VC,” Justice Tripathi said.

“The said appointments of private respondents (VCs of MU and VKSU), which were made without consultation with the state government as envisaged under Section 10 (2) of the Bihar State Universities Act, are quashed and it is declared that the appointment of two private respondents are void ab initio (invalid from the very inception),” the judge said.

Pramod Kumar Singh, a teacher of SP Jain College in Ara, had challenged the appointments, saying they had been made in violation of Section 10 (2) of the Bihar State University Act of 1976, which says that the chancellor should consult the state government before filling such posts.

During the course of hearing, the chancellor’s counsel had shown file notings wherein he (the chancellor) had in his hand scribbled on the left side of a file pertaining to the constitution of a universities tribunal bill to show that consultation had taken place with the government regarding appointment of the vice-chancellors.

“The court has meticulously gone through the said note of the chancellor which has been purportedly made in his own pen. The first thing which the court notices is that the note does not have any initial of the minister and it has been incorporated in a file not even related to the question of appointment of VCs to the universities of Bihar, much less the universities in question,” the court said in its 41-page judgment.

The chancellor’s counsel, Y.V. Giri, said: “We have not read the judgment. I can’t say at the moment whether or not we will go in for an appeal.”