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Supreme Court stays high court order on CBI probe into Pondicherry University
Pondicherry University said an external auditor put the alleged misappropriation at ₹80,000 and this amount was deducted from the retd professor’s benefits
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed an order of the Madras high court directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe alleged financial irregularities at Pondicherry University following a petition by the varsity.
A bench of justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra stayed the high court order of July 24 that came to be reiterated on August 9 when the university’s review application was dismissed.
Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra appearing for the university along with advocate Uday Gupta told the court that the high court order was first passed without hearing the university and argued that the high court wrongly assumed that the university’s executive council was sitting on the complaint for more than four months.
In its August 9 order, the high court said the university was an “interloper” seeking to “torpedo the investigation” and refused to alter its earlier decision.
The top court has issued notice to Anand, the petitioner before the high court and the CBI. It will next take up the case in October.
The matter relates to allegations of misappropriation levelled against a retired university professor from 2008 to 2016 when he was the head of the human resources development centre of the university.
The high court order came on a complaint by Anand in January 2022, alleging misappropriation of funds to the tune of ₹2.25 crore. It was also alleged that the vice chancellor was protecting professor Hariharan who retired in 2019.
The high court noted that the request to grant sanction to investigate Hariharan under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 was pending with the university since June 2022. Since the authority is required to take a decision in four months, the high court concluded that since this period was long over and there was no order, the competent authority would be “deemed” to have been granted and told the CBI to proceed with the probe.
The university said that the allegation against Hariharan formed part of an earlier complaint received in 2013 which ended with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) directing the ministry of human resources development (MHRD) in October 2019 to close the case since it only found discrepancies with regard to payment of honorarium and travel allowance during Hariharan’s tenure.
After Hariharan retired in December 2019, another high-level committee was constituted by the university in March 2022 and the accounts were verified by an independent auditor who concluded that the total misappropriation was to the tune of a little over ₹80,000. This sum was deducted from the terminal benefits payable to Hariharan, the university said.
