IMPORTANT POINT
When termination is set aside for non-compliance of natural justice, employer would be obliged to start the process from the stage when the Court interfered.

JUDGMENT :

Kurian, J.

Leave granted.

2. Certain appointments to the post of Professor, Associate Professor and Assistant Professor made in various divisions of the appellant-Institute, pursuant to advertisement dated 30.01.2013, were subsequently cancelled by the Board of Management (“Board”). The selection was held on 06.04.2013 and the incumbents were appointed accordingly. The Board, in its Eighth Meeting, as Item No.16, took a decision to cancel the appointments. The relevant consideration reads as follows:

“ITEM NO.16

To consider the Status Report on Selection of Academic Staff done on April 6, 2013.

The Board considered the Status Report on the selection of the Academic Staff and deliberated upon it at length. In the context, in addition to the minutes as at Item No.1 of this meeting, it was apprised by some Board members that the advertisement brought out by IIITA for these selections was NOT as per norms. Also for some of the appointments, eligibility criteria were unduly relaxed, taking incorrect pretext of the earlier BOM resolutions.

The Board also noticed that through a GO issued vide F.No.3.11014/11/Q4-CDN dated 19th July, 2004, MHRD had advised heads of all autonomous Bodies prohibiting all the retiring Directors, for any action to make selections/promotions two -three months before the expiry of their term or retirement, as the case may be. Further, the erstwhile director’s term expired on 26th December, 2012 and he was on six months extension in April 2013. Therefore, in April 2013, he was neither competent nor authorised to call for any selections.

When these facts became known to the Board in this meeting, it became clear that the entire process of selection/appointment and other recommendations mentioned by the selection committee therein, was wrong ab initio.

Accordingly, the BoM in this Meeting recommended, in supersession to the earlier decisions of the Board in this matter, that all selections/appointments done on April 6th, 2013 are CANCELLED. ...”

3. Based on the above-said decision, the teachers were terminated from service. They challenged the same before the High Court in Writ Petition No.22558 of 2014 and connected cases. Those cases were disposed of by judgment dated 11.12.2015. Though the High Court has gone into the various aspects, the Court finally found that the decision-making process adopted by the Board was vitiated. The High Court was of the view that the appellant should have considered as to whether it was bound by University Grants Commission Regulations or the qualifications prescribed by the Institute and as advertised in the Notification for Selection. It was also held that the relaxation of qualification had to be individually assessed, having regard to the requirement based on experience, etc. The High Court hence set aside the Resolution at Item No.16 taken in the Board and the consequential termination of the appointments. To quote the operative portion:

“For all the aforesaid reasons recorded hereinabove the entire decision making process is clearly vitiated and the unclarity on the issue of the authority of the respondents to undertake this exercise as also the correct application of rules and the law in this regard therefore persuade us to strike down the action taken against the petitioners.

Consequently, the impugned cancellation orders on the basis of the impugned resolution of the 8th Board Meeting cannot be sustained and the same are hereby quashed. The writ petitions are accordingly allowed and the impugned cancellation orders in these petitions as well as the 16th Resolution of the 8th Board Meeting are hereby quashed. The resolutions passed in the 7th Board Meeting and 8th Board Meeting only in so far as they are adverse to the petitioners shall be open to consideration in the light of the observations made hereinabove.

In view of the findings recorded by us hereinabove, we leave it open to the Board to take a fresh decision as may be permissible in the light of the observations m