Cuttack: The Ravenshaw University is back to square one in filling up 156 faculty positions after nearly four years with Orissa High Court directing it on Wednesday to redo the recruitment process by issuing advertisement inviting applications for the vacant posts afresh.

The court expected the varsity to strictly follow the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the fresh recruitment process.

The university is facing acute staff crunch as the authorities are unable to fill up two third of the faculty position, which have been vacant for over four years now as the recruitment process remains mired in legal tangle.

Vice-chancellor Ishan Patro on Thursday told The Telegraph that a fresh advertisement inviting applications for the posts with guidelines strictly adhering to the UGC would be issued shortly. "We are grateful that the court has given us opportunity to redo the recruitment process for the vacant posts," Patro said.

The posts of professor (20), reader (37) and lecturer (99) are lying vacant in 18 disciplines.

Initially, the university had the recruitment process by inviting applications for the posts through an advertisement on June 23, 2014. But, the high court quashed the recruitment process on December 9, 2015 and directed the university to issue a fresh advertisement strictly in accordance with the UGC regulations.

Accordingly, the university issued a revised advertisement inviting applications for the 156 posts on January 29, 2016. But, the process hit a road block again with the high court first imposing restrictions on it on a PIL and then issuing interim stay orders on petitions filed by several applicants challenging it in April 2016. Some contempt petitions were also filed.

The case had since languished in the court till the university authorities filed a petition recently seeking the court's permission to withdraw the January 29, 2016 advertisement and issue fresh advertisement in accordance with the UGC regulations.

"The division bench of Chief Justice Vineet Saran and Justice B.R. Sarangi allowed the university's plea and dismissed all the petitions in an analogous order, while declaring invalid the January 29, 2016 advertisement," said Khirod Rout, one of the counsels for the petitioner.

While quashing the recruitment process undertaken following the first advertisement issued on June 23, 2014, the high court had directed the university to issue fresh advertisement strictly in accordance with the UGC Act and regulations.

"It is painful for us to observe that the authorities in the helm of affairs of administration of the Ravenshaw University have not bothered at all about the glory and unblemished record of a premiere institution and in the result made the entire recruitment of teachers a mockery," the high court had observed in the December 9, 2015 order.