The Uttarakhand High Court has firmly rejected a legal challenge against the appointment of the registrar at the Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Engineering and Technology, branding the petition as “baseless” and imposing a substantial penalty on the petitioner.
A division bench, comprising Chief Justice G. Narendra and Justice Subhash Upadhyay, ordered the petitioner, Ajay Kishore Bahuguna, a resident of Tehri, to pay a fine of Rs 5 lakh. This amount must be deposited with the State Legal Services Authority within a timeframe of six weeks.
Bahuguna had initiated the plea, alleging that Sandeep Kumar, the Institute’s Registrar, lacked the necessary educational qualifications and the requisite minimum five years of administrative experience for the prestigious position.
In response, the institute robustly defended Kumar’s selection, asserting that his appointment was fully compliant with established rules and had received due approval from its Board of Governors. Furthermore, the institute’s representatives contended that questioning an appointment made in 2019, six years after the fact, was inherently unfair.
