HC dismisses petition challenging GO on SGOU Syndicate

The Kerala High Court has dismissed a petition that challenged a government order (GO) that withdrew the nominations of existing members of the Sree Narayana Guru Open University (SGOU) Syndicate, and replaced them with a newly-reconstituted panel.

While dismissing the petition, a Bench of Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan observed that there was no reason to interfere with the impugned order, as no legal or statutory rights of the petitioners had been violated due to the withdrawal of their nominations as Syndicate members. The court was hearing a petition by former Pro Vice-Chancellor of Kerala University Prof P.P. Ajayakumar, G. Sugunan and P. Haridas, challenging the GO. They contended that their four-year term as Syndicate members would expire only on March 2029, and that their nominations could not be withdrawn before this.

The court observed that if the petitioners had been nominated as Syndicate members on account of their eminence, and that they should have accepted the withdrawal of their nominations with the same sense of “eminence”, rather than approaching the court to establish their eminence.