Delhi High Court seeks Central government response on plea against selection committee to appoint School of Planning & Architecture director

The Delhi High Court recently issued notice to the Central government on a plea challenging the constitution of the selection committee tasked to appoint the new Director of School of Planning & Architecture. .Justice Tushar Rao Gedela sought the responses of the Central government and the School of Planning and Architecture on a petition filed by Professor Dr Pratap Manohar Raval. Raval is the Head of the Department of Planning, College Of Engineering Pune (COEP) Technological University and one of the aspirants to the post of Director of School of Planning & Architecture. The Court said that the selection to the post would be subject to the outcome of the case. The matter will now be considered on May 25 by the roster bench. .In his plea, Raval argued that the the constitution of the selection committee to recommend a candidate for the post of the Director was mala fide and violative of clause 17(1) of the Schools of Planning and Architecture Statute, 2016."That as per the Statute 17, the chairperson and members (of selection committee) has to be technical expert in the field of Planning or Architecture but shockingly, the chairperson and a member of the appointed selection committee doesn’t even fulfill the basic criteria. The chairperson, Prof Sudhir Jain, has done his bachelor, master and Phd degree in Civil Engineering and has no work experience in the field of planning or architecture. Similarly, Prof Praveen Kumar too is a civil engineer with expertise in transportation engineering," the plea stated. It further said that the "illegal selection committee" constituted by the Central government is carrying out the exercise of selecting the director and is already under process of recommending the names."That interviewing certain candidates and recommending names, without proper statutory mandate, is not only illegal but is also discriminatory to the petitioner and other aspirants," the plea contended. .Advocates Namit Saxena and Shivam Raghuwanshi appeared for the petitioner. .[Read Order]