- (1.) The petition is brought at the instance of an Information Scientist in the National Brain Research Centre seeking for issuance of a writ of quo warranto to declare the 4th respondent as an usurper of an office and to vacate him since he does not hold the qualifications essential for holding the post of a Registrar of the 3rd respondent-institute and deemed University declared as such under Section 3 of the UGC Act.
(2.) The petitioner would state that the educational qualifications as prescribed in the advertisement notification issued in 2004 for Registrar was as follows:- "6. Registrar: (Pay scale Rs.14,300-400-18,300) Method of recruitment: Direct recruitment/Deputation Essential Qualification: A distinguished academic career with Pot Graduate/Ph.D. degree from a university of repute with a total experience of 12 years in managing scientific and academic activities in Scientific Research/Teaching Institutions. Candidates with at least 5 years experience in the scale of Rs.12,000-375- 16,500/- or equivalent in an organization of repute may also apply."
(3.) The petitioner would state that the information secured under the RTI revealed that he had passed B.Sc. from MR College Vizianagaram, Andhra University; B.L. from Law College, Andhra University, and Diploma in English from Arts College, Andhra University. As regards his experience as brought in Column 9, he had served as assisting the scientist incharge from 1988 to 1998 which cannot be taken to be a managerial position, but he had worked as assisting the Head of the Institute, namely, the Principal from 17.02.1998 to 17.09.2001 and only from 19.09.2001 till the filing of the application for appointment, he had been the Incharge of the Administration and Accounts of the Institute. According to him, even apart from the deficit in educational qualification, he also did not have the requisite 12 years of experience in a management procedure. The petitioner would bring to his support a judgment of the Supreme Court in Juthika Bhattacharya Versus State of Madhya Pradesh and others, 1976 AIR(SC) 2534 where the challenge was to appointment of a Principal to a Higher Secondary School. The court had to consider the issue of whether the requirement of postgraduate degree would include a BT degree after his graduation. The Supreme Court explained and gave an illustration of a LL.B. Degree as well in para 3 in the judgment as follows:- "The B.T. course of studies, we are informed, is open only to graduates and in dictionary manner of speaking, the degree of "Bachelor of Teaching" may be said to be a "post"-graduate degree in the sense that the degree is obtainable only "after" graduation. That is the sense in which the word "post" is used in expressions like "post-nuptial", "post-prandial", "post-operative", "postmortem" and so forth. In these expressions, "post" means simply "after", the emphasis being on the happening of an event after a certain point of time, But the expression "postgraduate degree" has acquired in the educational world a special significance, a technical content. A Bachelor's degree like the B.T., or the LL.B is not considered to be a post-graduate degree even though those degrees can be taken only after graduation. In the refined and elegant world of education, it is the holder of a Master's degree like the M.Ed. or the LL.M. who earns, recognition as the holder of a post-graduate degree.";