Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday settled the dispute over the Panjab University’s (PU’s) senate elections. The High Court in a strongly-worded judgement has directed the varsity’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Raj Kumar to conduct the Senate elections within two months by all means.
PU’s Professor Keshav Malhotra and others had filed a petition in the High Court stating that elections are not being held even after the term of the Senate is over. The term of the senate, the apex governing body of PU, ended on October 31 and the syndicate’s term got over on December 31. The varsity is without a governing body now. Elections were to take place in August, but the varsity deferred them citing Covid-19 pandemic as the reason.
Beginning the judgement with Charles Caleb Colton’s quote, Justice Fateh Deep Singh said, “Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with unlimited power.”
“Little did the enacters of the Panjab University Act, 1947, would have realised that what they have framed as a comprehensive and exhaustive legislation would come to be a tool in the hands of its own academic officer, pursuing not the educational goals but satisfying his own personal ends and thereby in the process virtually oust its own governing body, looking after the management and superintendence of this August institution once of international fame and oldest in this country,” the bench of justice Fatehdeep Singh observed, while questioning the V-C’s role in delaying the elections.
The court noted, “In a democratic system, elections need to be held periodically which in turn leads to democratic governance and thus, is a very essential function in decision making. Besides, it leads to accountability and raising of conscious level resulting in better and efficient running/governance of an institution.”
