HC stays Prof's appointment as Chairperson of CSPILAS at JNU - 2nd time his posting stayed

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has now stayed Professor Mazhar Asif's appointment as the Chairperson of the Centre for Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies (CSPILAS) at JNU, two years after it had stayed another order appointing him, a professor of Persian Studies, as the Chair of the Linguistics Department.

On both counts, the high court was approached by fellow professors from the department of which he was made Chair — with the same contention — that the appointment went against the statutes of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, according to which the Chairperson of a Department must be elected from among the professors of that department.

In the most recent ruling against Professor Asif's appointment, a bench of Justice V Kameswar Rao held thus: "It is clear from the above, that the Chairperson of the Centre/ Department has to be appointed from amongst the Professors/Senior Fellows for a period of two years. There is no stipulation that the appointment cannot be renewed beyond two years. Though there is no specific stipulation that the Professors/Senior Fellows have to be from the same Centre/Department, but the proviso clause more specifically the words "where in any Centre/Department, there is only one Professor/Senior Fellow, the Executive Council may also appoint one of the Associate Professors/Fellows as the Chairman of the Centre/Department." makes it clear that the Professor(s) has to be from the same Centre."

Asif's most recent appointment was challenged by Professor Rajeev Saxena, of the CSPILAS. Prof Saxena's petition mentioned a letter from the varsity that said that he and one other professor from the Centre could not be appointed as the Chair because Saxena had completed two years as Chair and the other professor was replaced due to "a certain misconduct".

Professors within the varsity have repeatedly insisted that the appointments under Vice-Chancellor Jagadesh M Kumar have been reckless and brings disrepute to the faculty recruitment process at the varsity.

Teachers associated with the JNUTA in 2019 had questioned several appointments. One senior professor maintained that there have been professors appointed to teach Computer Science classes with a degree in Computational Biology and there have also been appointees to the Korean Studies department who have little or no knowledge of the language.