Allahabad High Court Directs BHU Vice Chancellor to Enforce Compliance in Delayed Promotion of Faculty

To the surprise, Allahabad High Court issued notice to Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Banaras Hindu University Vice Chancellor to file compliance affidavit or to personally appear in court on July 3. The above has been directed against the contempt petition of Dr. Sushil Kumar Dubey, a lecturer, who urged that the pending promotion had not been given as ordered by obvious court directions.

Dr. Dubey was recommended by the BHU Executive Council (EC) on June 4, 2021, moving up from the Assistant Professor (Stage 2) rank to Stage 3 but nearly three years later than that, and this action is still pending, with the petitioner having been compelled to approach the courts once again for justice.

Yesterday, January 7, the High Court had also rejected a writ petition in the case and directed that if the EC was reconstituted within reasonable time, it should decide on promotion of the petitioner within three months. Or, if the EC had not been constituted yet, the university should promote Dr. Dubey as per any further order of the EC.

Even though directed expressly by the court, till now, no initiative seems to have been made by the university's authorities. The lawyer of Dr. Dubey on Monday has asserted that to date, there has been no issuance of promotion orders by the Vice Chancellor.

The recent reprimand by the court is oriented more towards imposition of greater bureaucratic lethargy on institutions of learning. The judiciary also shows its strict insistence on accountability in imposing punctuality in the implementation of its orders.

With the July 3 deadline closing in, now all eyes are on BHU administration. The case not only highlights a single individual's lengthy wait for promotion but also highlights larger system lags that persist to haunt India's government universities.