Tamil Nadu government moves Supreme Court to transfer PIL against laws taking away Governor's power to appoint Vice-Chancellors

The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday (May 21, 2025) informed the Madras High Court of having filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to transfer to the latter a public interest litigation (PIL) petition currently pending before the High Court, challenging the validity of State laws that take away the Governor's power to appoint Vice-Chancellors.
Appearing before a summer vacation Bench of Justices G.R. Swaminathan and V. Lakshminarayanan, senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the Tamil Nadu Higher Education Department, said the transfer petition had been filed in view of connected cases, pending before the top court.
Higher Education Secretary C. Samayamoorthy also filed a memo before the High Court, contending that the PIL petition was politically motivated as it had been filed by Kutty, alias K. Venkatachalapathy, who was a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office-bearer in Tirunelveli district.
Though the petitioner had challenged the State laws on 56 grounds, his primary contention was that the State laws were 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.
Stating the validity of Regulation 7.3 was in itself a subject matter of the litigations pending before the Supreme Court for quite sometime now, the Secretary said, adding that it would only be appropriate to transfer the present PIL petition to the top court and tag it along with the cases pending there.
The Division Bench was also informed that a mention was made before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R. Gavai on May 19, 2025, seeking early listing of the transfer petition and that the CJI had orally asked the counsel for the State government to inform the High Court about the transfer petition.
The Higher Education Secretary also stated there was no grave urgency involved in the case for the High Court to hear the matter during summer vacation, without providing sufficient time for the State government to file a detailed counter affidavit, meeting all 56 grounds.
He urged the Division Bench led by Justice Swaminathan to defer the hearing on the PIL petition until the disposal of the transfer petition filed before the Supreme Court.

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