Pondicherry: Lieutenant Governor receives flack from former MP for taking back PTU registrar suspension orders

On Sunday, former Pondicherry Lok Sabha member M Ramadoss hit back at the "intervention of Lieutenant Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and her direction to cancel the order of Puducherry Technological University (PTU) Chancellor suspending the Registrar."

In a release, Ramadoss who is also a former Head of the Department of Economics in Pondicherry Central University, said, "the Lieutenant Governor has violated her authority and intervened without justification to cancel the order of suspension."

PTU Vice Chancellor S Mohan on Saturday issued an order suspending Registrar G Sivaradje for his alleged "misuse of office and misappropriation of funds of the university."

He had also said in his order that there were allegations against the Registrar in public fora and media, and the allegations were also found to be prima facie true.

However, the suspension order was cancelled within hours of its issuance by the Under Secretary to the Department of Higher and Technical Education of Puducherry government on the basis of the order of the Lt Governor, who is the chancellor of the university.

Without adopting the practical procedure and without assigning any reason for cancelling the order of suspension, the Lt Governor had misused her authority and "unjustifiably intervened in the working of a university which is an autonomous body," Ramadoss said and questioned the Lt Governor's intervention.

The Association of Teachers of PTU questioned "the haste with which the Lt Governor rescinded the order of suspension."

A spokesperson of the association in a release said, the Vice Chancellor had highlighted that the allegations against the Registrar were prime facie true and asked the Registrar not to leave the headquarters without prior permission from competent authority.

Secretary of the Puducherry unit of Communist Party of India (Marxist) R Rajangam, in a release, said the action of the Lt Governor revoking the suspension order "is condemnable".