HC stays move to sack AIIMS director

The Delhi High Court today stayed the dismissal of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Dr P Venugopal.

While giving two weeks time to the four respondents "" the Centre, Health Minister A Ramadoss, AIIMS and the Election Commission "" to explain the reasons for his termination, Justice Anil Kumar in an interim order stayed the impugned decision of termination of Venugopal and the resolution passed in this regard by Ramadoss till the next date of hearing in August.

Venugopal's counsel Arun Jaitley submitted that according to the rules and regulations of AIIMS and an earlier Supreme Court decision, the tenure of the AIIMS director (which is of five years) could not have been curtailed without having justified reasons and issuance of notice.

"Once a person is appointed to a tenure post, his appointment with the said office begins when he joins and it comes to an end on the completion of the tenure unless curtailed by justifiable grou-nds. Such a person does not superannuate, he only goes out of the office on completion of his tenure. The question of prematurely retiring him does not arise," he added.

According to the counsel, the former director was facing ire of the health minister because he wanted to preserve and uphold the autonomy of the institution which was becoming an instrument of 'nepotism'.

Jaitley further argued that the petition just didn't want to highlight the injustice meted out to the former director, but wanted to address the larger question of the issue of autonomy involving the country's premiere medical institute.

Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium tried to justify the termination saying that the body had passed the resolution in accordance with law as Regulation 31 entitled it to do so. Subramanium argued that the said regulation wasn't prescribed when the Supreme Court had passed its judgement in the L P Aggarwal case.

"After Regulation 31 was introduced, the government was empowered to terminate a director after giving him a three months notice. And the petitioner hasn't challenged the said regulation," he added.

The ousted AIIMS director had moved the court yesterday challenging his termination by the government in the wake of his public spat with Union Health Minister A Ramadoss.

Venugopal had also sought a direction to restrain the Centre from nominating any minister either as a member or the president of AIIMS under the provisions of Sections 4 and 6 of the AIIMS Act, 1956.