U’khand HC orders removal of Ayurved Univ VC on charges of misrepresentation of age

NAINITAL: Uttarakhand high court on Thursday ordered removal of the vice-chancellor (VC) of Dehradun-based Uttarakhand Ayurved University after concluding the hearing of a petition which alleged that the VC, Satyendra Prasad Mishra, had secured the post by providing wrong information about his age.

 A single bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia delivered the order of removing the VC after hearing a PIL which was filed by Neeraj Kumar Dhulia, a resident of Pauri district in August. The PIL had alleged that Mishra, who was born in 1949, had misrepresented his date of birth claiming it to be 1951 in order to show that he was eligible for the position. The maximum age limit for applying to the post was 65 years which the petitioner alleged, Mishra had crossed at the time he was appointed.

Yogesh Kumar Pacholia, advocate of the petitioner NK Dhulia, told TOI that the matter of the VC’s age had been raised before other officials, including the university’s chancellor and CM Harish Rawat but “since there was no action, we were forced to approach the court.”

Incidentally, Mishra had been vice-chancellor of the university, which is an autonomous body of the Uttarakhand government, since more than five years. The university had been set up in 2009 as the first government ayurvedic university in the state. It has two campuses in Haridwar and a number of colleges affiliated to it including Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurvedic College and Hospital. Mishra took over as the first VC of the university in January 2011.

 He was reappointed to the post in Januray 2015 after his tenure expired. This reappointment, Dhulia argued in his PIL, was against norms as Mishra had misrepresented his date of birth and was not eligible for the position.

According to Dhulia, he sought information about the VC’s date of birth through an RTI application. The reply to his query revealed that the VC had himself submitted his bio-data in the institution in which he had mentioned his date of birth as July 14, 1949. During the reappointment, the PIL alleged, the year of birth was changed to 1951. “According to the information provided through RTI, Mishra’s age was more than 65 years on January 7, 2015 which was the date of his appointment as the vice-chancellor. This was in violation of the provisions of the Uttarakhand Ayurved University Act 2009 which stipulates that the vice-chancellor should not be more than 65 years of age,” said Pacholia.

Pradeep Hairiya, the advocate representing Mishra, told TOI that his client had submitted his resignation to the governor KK Paul who is the chancellor of the university on October 8 but it had not been accepted. “The court has disposed off the petition today and announced its judgment, so there is nothing else to be said in the matter,” he said.