Eight members of the AMU governing body who attended the meeting to shortlist candidates for the vice chancellor (VC) position at Aligarh Muslim University have filed a strong dissent note, raising ethical and legal concerns about the acting VC’s chairing of the meeting where his wife’s name was shortlisted.
Naima Khatoon, the principal of AMU’s Women’s College and wife of acting VC Mohammad Gulrez, received fifty votes from the AMU Court, or governing body, at the meeting on Monday.
The other two shortlisted candidates, prominent jurist and former vice chancellor of National Law University, Nalsar Faizan Mustafa and M Uruj Rabbani, received 61 and 53 votes, respectively. Rabbani was the former dean of AMU’s Faculty of Medicine.
Eight of the 84 members of the AMU Court who attended the special meeting shortly afterward issued the note of disagreement.
Senior faculty members Professor Aftab Alam, Chairman of the Department of Strategic Studies, and Professor Sufyan Beg, Principal of the Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology at AMU, are two of the signatories to the dissent note.
Professor Hafiz Ilyas Khan, elected members Khurshid Khan, Syed Nadeem Ahmad, Syed Mohammad Ahmad Ali, Suhail Ahmad Niyazi, and M Suhaib are the other six court members that signed the dissenting note.
Professor Aftab Alam told PTI, ‘The act of the officiating Vice Chancellor to preside and vote at a meeting in which his wife is one of the candidates violates the basic principle of ‘Nemo judex in causa sua’ (no one is a judge in his own cause), the conflict of interest and the Central Civil Services (conduct) Rules, 1964.’
‘Surprisingly the objections by two members in the Executive Council (in its meeting on November 30) were not only ignored by the Chair but he (the acting VC) himself gave the ruling in his own favour in gross violation of the principle of natural justice,’ he said.
The note of dissent mentioned ‘a fundamental principle of justice and fairness and provides that a person cannot be the decision-maker in a case in which he or his close family has a personal interest or stake. This is because of the fact that if a member of the decision making body is personally or one of his close family members are involved or interested in the outcome of a matter under consideration, it will create bias and a conflict of interest.’
Omar Peerzada, an AMU spokesman, countered that nothing in the institution’s act or statutes prohibited the VC from preside over or cast a vote at a meeting when his spouse is a contender for selection.
‘It may be pointed out that none of the visitor nominees to the Executive Council who were present at the earlier meeting of the Executive Council or the four former VC of the institution who attended Monday’s meeting of the court raised any objection on this critical matter,’ he said.
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