Why did Madras High Court keep legal guidelines taking away T.N. Governor’s energy to nominate Vice-Chancellors? | Explained-OxBig News Network

The story up to now:

The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly passed a series of Bills for amending the legal guidelines relevant to numerous State-run universities. The main goal of the amendments was to switch from the Governor (in his/her capability because the Chancellor) to the State authorities, the facility to nominate Vice Chancellors to these universities. When the Governor sat over the Bills, with out granting assent, for lengthy, the State authorities approached the Supreme Court and obtained an order on April 8, 2025. Taking critical be aware of the big delay in grant of assent, the highest courtroom ordered that the Bills could be deemed to have been granted assent. By advantage of the Supreme Court’s order, the modification Bills grew to become Acts.

Subsequently, Kutty alias Okay. Venkatachalapathy, an advocate primarily based in Tirunelveli, filed a public interest litigation petition earlier than the Madras High Court on May 12, 2025, difficult the constitutional validity of these modification Acts. A summer season trip Bench of Justices G.R. Swaminathan and V. Lakshminarayanan entertained the PIL petition and handed an interim order on May 21, 2025. The Bench stayed the operation of the amendment Acts to the extent to which they take away the facility of appointment of Vice Chancellors from the palms of the Chancellor and vest the identical within the State authorities.

What is the reasoning given by the Division Bench for staying the amended legal guidelines?

Authoring the decision for the Division Bench, Justice Swaminathan identified that the modification Acts don’t make any change to the place of the Governor being the Chancellor of State universities. They solely take away the Chancellor’s energy to nominate Vice Chancellors to the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University, Anna University, Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and so forth.

The Bench discovered the modification Acts to be repugnant to Regulation 7.3 of the University Grants Commission Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges, 2018. It identified that the UGC Regulations clearly state that solely the Visitor/Chancellor may appoint a Vice Chancellor from amongst names really helpful by a search-cum-selection committee and due to this fact, the modification Acts conferring such an influence on the State authorities, as an alternative of the Governor, have been straight in battle with 2018 Regulations.

Can UGC Regulations prevail over State Acts?

The Division Bench stated, the Supreme Court had already confirmed the primacy of the UGC Regulations over the State legal guidelines. In Gambhirdhan Okay. Gadhvi versus State of Gujarat (2022), the highest courtroom had stated: “It cannot be disputed that the UGC Regulations are enacted by the UGC in exercise of powers under Sections 26(1)(e) and 26(1)(g) of the UGC Act, 1956. Even as per the UGC Act every rule and regulation made under the said Act, shall be laid before each House of Parliament. Therefore, being a subordinate legislation, UGC Regulations become part of the Act.”

A Bench of Justices M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagaratna of the Supreme Court had additionally noticed: “In case of any conflict between the State legislation and the Central legislation, the Central legislation shall prevail by applying the rule/principle of repugnancy as enunciated in Article 254 of the Constitution as the subject ‘education’ is in the Concurrent List (List III) of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution. Therefore, any appointment as a Vice-Chancellor contrary to the provisions of the UGC Regulations can be said to be in violation of the statutory provisions, warranting a writ of quo warranto.”

The ruling was subsequently adopted by former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli in State of West Bengal versus Anindya Sundar Das whereby they wrote: “In view of the decision in Gambhirdan K. Gadhvi, even if the provisions of the Act allowed the appointment of the Vice Chancellor by the State Government, it would be in violation of the UGC Regulations. The Regulations become part of the statute framed by Parliament and will prevail.”

After citing two extra Supreme Court verdicts on the identical traces, the Division Bench led by Justice Swaminathan stated: “When repugnancy between the impugned amendment Acts and the UGC Regulation is obvious and admitted, it is our judicial duty to apply the law declared by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in as many as four recent decisions.”

Do courts have energy to remain the operation of Acts?

On the subsequent query as as to if a courtroom may keep the operation of legal guidelines handed by the legislature, Justice Swaminathan stated, the reply lay in Supreme Court’s 2021 determination in Dr. Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil versus State of Maharashtra. In that judgement, the Supreme Court had stated: “Normally an interim order is not passed to stultify statutory provisions. However, there is no absolute rule to restrain interim orders being passed when an enactment is ex facie unconstitutional or contrary to the law laid down by this Court.”

Justice Swaminathan additionally recalled that the Supreme Court itself had on January 12, 2021 stayed the operation of the three farm legal guidelines, handed by the Parliament, which led to a nationwide outcry. “Interestingly, Shri P.Wilson (senior counsel representing the Tamil Nadu Higher Education department in the present PIL petition), who is now opposing the grant of interim relief was the counsel for a set of petitioners therein and welcomed the proposal to stay the implementation of the farm laws,” the decide wrote.

Can a summer season trip bench move such orders?

Though Advocate General P.S. Raman in addition to Mr. Wilson had urged the Division Bench to grant suffiicient time for the State authorities to file its counter affidavit and never take up the keep software for listening to throughout summer season trip sitting, the Division Bench rejected their plea.

“It is true that the High Court is on vacation and that we are sitting as Vacation Bench Judges. To us, it should not make any difference. The Hon’ble Chief Justice of India has observed that court vacation sittings should be rechristened ‘partial working days’. We take inspiration from the said observation. Judges can be on vacation, courts should not be on vacation. Access to justice should always be available. When an advocate complains that an unconstitutional legislation has been passed, we cannot shut our eyes. That is why we propose to intervene then and there,” the Bench stated.

Pointing out that that they had granted per week’s time for the State to file its written response, the Bench noticed: ‘The unconstitutionality and repugnancy vitiating the impugned (under challenge) amendment Acts is so glaring and obvious that we cannot shut our eyes. We are convinced that the impugned amendments are ex-facie unconstitutional. If an unconstitutional process is allowed to proceed, it would cause irreparable injury and public interest would suffer.”

Does the High Court order amount to reviewing Supreme Court’s verdict in Governor’s assent case?

The Division Bench, additional, took sturdy exception to an argument that the High Court’s interference with the modification Acts would nearly quantity to reviewing Supreme Court’s April 8, 2025 verdict in Governor’s assent case. “Shri P.Wilson made a preposterous submission that we were virtually reviewing the decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court rendered in State of Tamil Nadu versus The Governor of Tamil Nadu. No submission can be more outrageous than this. We are mindful of our position. We know that we have to give the highest respect to any decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. We do not need lectures from Shri P.Wilson on this score. We believe in judicial discipline. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in the said decision was not concerned with the constitutionality of the impugned provisions.”

The Bench went on to state: “When the learned Advocate General at one point claimed that the petitioner’s Senior Counsel is merely reiterating the contentions advanced in the said decision (April 8, 2025 ruling), we called upon the learned Advocate General to draw our attention to the relevant paragraphs, where the contentions now advanced stood rejected. The learned Advocate General made a vain attempt and subsequently gave up this objection altogether.”

“When we notice that the impugned amending Acts fall foul of the law laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, we are unable to mechanically adjourn the proceedings. It is this primary consideration that impels us to grant interim relief,” the Bench concluded.