Rajiv Narain Raina, J. - (1.) There can be no doubt that the petitioner was wronged by a termination order issued by the Registrar of the respondent-University completely misunderstanding the instructions of the Vice Chancellor not to foreclose the employment but desist from assigning a particular type of duty to the petitioner as explained hereafter. The Vice Chancellor admits that he had never meant that the services of the petitioner should be terminated, but due to grave communication gap, the services of the petitioner were brought to an end by a stigmatic order. The University is also agreed that the Vice chancellor had no power to terminate the services of Lecturers, like the petitioner, as the power to do so was posited elsewhere, that is, in the Executive Council taking final decision.
(2.) The foundation of the action taken as it turned out was a mistake committed by the petitioner in paper-setting for a University examination. As an internal paper-setter, she repeated the same question in both sets while she was required to set two different question papers. The petitioner apologized for her mistake and undertook she would never repeat it. This is how the Vice Chancellor, somewhat irked, had ordered that she should not be made a papersetter. But that did not mean that her services should be terminated. These are the sequence of events which this Court accepts as correct as are forthcoming from the paper-book.
(3.) However, the other side of the coin is that the petitioner was appointed against a leave vacancy in place of one Professor Dr. Pawan Budhwar, and therefore, the appointment was not of the regular kind, although the mode of selection was through fair and proper procedure adopted. Professor Dr. Pawan Budhwar did not return from leave.;