Cuttack, Feb. 10: The controversy surrounding the filling of 140 vacant posts in the Ravenshaw University has acquired a new dimension with Orissa High Court taking up a petition seeking intervention against the delay in declaration of the selection results.

The petitioners have alleged that they, "along with other candidates, are passing through mental agony and uncertainty" due to the delay owing to a restrain order issued by a single judge bench over five months ago.

Manorama Patri and Ansuman Roy, who are applicants for faculty in School of Life Sciences, filed the petition in the form of a writ appeal against the restrain order. They had appeared for the interview conducted in August.

The division bench of Chief Justice Amitava Roy and Justice A.K. Rath had taken up the petition on February 6 and allowed the petitioner counsel one-week time to be ready to present arguments.

The Ravenshaw University had invited applications for posts of professors (16), readers (29) and lecturers (95) through an advertisement on June 23, 2014. The controversy had sparked of with five separate petitions challenging the advertisement in the high court and a single judge bench issuing interim restrain orders on August 19, 20, 21 and 27 last year. The interim orders allowed the university to continue with the selection process but restrained it from taking any final decision. All the five petitioners were applicants for the posts.

The appeal petition alleged that the interim restrain orders were issued on petitions "filed without any cause of action" but "only apprehensions of petitioners that they might not be selected by the selection committee." Besides, the interim restrain orders failed to take note of the fact that Ravenshaw University, the premier educational institution of the state, was facing acute shortage of teachers, the appeal petition said and sought quashing of the interim restrain orders.

As things stand today, interview on the basis of applications by 1,533 aspirants had been over for vacant posts in botany, zoology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science, economics, political science and philosophy departments between August 20 and November 20 last year, sources said. But, the appointments are yet to be made. The university has not been able to declare the results due to the legal hurdle.

In pursuance of a high court order issued on a PIL, Ravenshaw University's registrar Padan Kumar Jena had, in an affidavit on November 20, 2014, said selection process had conducted interviews for the posts in the School of Physical Sciences, School of Life Sciences, School of Social Sciences and School of Mathematics and Computer Science.

"The results have not been declared for the reasons of restrain orders issued by the high court," the registrar said in his affidavit.

The high court had taken up Ravenshaw's faculty shortage, along with five other universities, in August last year as a PIL when one Dhirendranath Bhoi filed a letter petition seeking intervention against disorder in academic activities in the state-run universities due to acute shortage of teachers.

Taking note of large-scale vacancies in faculty, the court had, on August 11, directed the university registrars to fill up the vacant posts, preferably within three months.