A VC’S CONDUCT AND A LAWYER’S VERDICT

Mr.Isaac Mohanlal 

                                                                    VC Dr. Kalyani Mathivanan

                                                                                Being Received (Indian Express)

THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS/08.07.2014

MADURAI: It was a kind of reception no Vice Chancellor of a State University has received in recent public memory nor is anyone likely to get such an ‘honour’ in the near future.

Three days after the Supreme Court stayed an order of the Madras High Court bench here ousting Kalyani Mathivanan as Vice Chancellor of the Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), she arrived in grand style from New Delhi to get back to work on Monday.

Earlier, on June 27 she became the first Vice Chancellor in Tamil Nadu to be removed by the High Court on the grounds that she did not satisfy the eligibility criteria prescribed by the University Grants Commission to hold the post.

On Monday, as she landed at the Madurai airport armed with the Supreme Court order, accompanied by her daughter, a section of the university staff including teachers and non-teaching staff and supporters welcomed her with bouquets and shawls.

The reception accorded to her befitted that of a VIP politician as she drove down to the university with her supporters following her en route in over two dozen vehicles.

A video cameraman who was on a car ahead of the convoy did his best to capture the ‘glorious’ moments. When the convoy reached the entrance of the university, a section of jubilant staff members who have been supporting her, set off fire crackers and raised slogans hailing her.

Kalyani stepped out of her SUV to greet them and accepted a garland offered by a priest and cut a huge cake to celebrate her interim legal victory.

School children who were lined up on either sides of the road inside the campus showered flower petals as she steadily walked into the campus. Inside the university premises, numerous banners were placed on the pavements hailing the Vice Chancellor including one showing her in an NCC outfit.

A visibly pleased Kalyani, who appeared overwhelmed by the unprecedented reception, garlanded a portrait of her father D K Kuthalingam, who had served as Vice Chancellor in the same university. Teachers and other staff greeted her with shawls.

Her supporters had also put up posters in many parts of the city hailing the apex court’s stay order.

The Hindu/09.07.2014

MKU counsel withdraws himself from representing it in court

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

President of Madurai Bench of Madras High Court Bar Association (MMBA) Isaac Mohanlal on Tuesday withdrew himself from representing Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) in court cases as a mark of protest against the reception accorded to Kalyani Mathivanan when she returned to the Vice-Chancellor’s office on Monday.

In a letter addressed to her, he said: “I was rather upset to see the morning newspapers carrying disgusting scenes on the university campus yesterday at the event of the so-called re-entry of the Vice-Chancellor.

“The University with Potential for Excellence has been deplorably reduced into a political podium where the Vice-Chancellor entered with a convoy of cars following her from the airport to see the hoards of hoardings erected on either side and posters pasted all over the walls and deafening crackers breaking the silence and serenity of the campus, and agonisingly, a band of school children arrayed along the road under the scorching sun, during their class hours, with their tender hands showering flower petals knowing not what they were doing. “Amidst this show, it is reported, the Vice-Chancellor walked her way up to the office, after cutting the coloured cake, of course, armed with the interim order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court staying for a limited period the order of the Hon’ble High Court removing her from office. This, in my view, is nothing but a mean manifestation of the arrogance of power and the insolence of office.

“At this juncture, I am afraid that I would be offending my conscience if I still continued as the counsel for the university. You would pardon me for I wish to withdraw myself from all cases on the side of the university. I request you to make alternative arrangements at the earliest.”

“I would be offending my conscience if I still continued as counsel for the university”

A VC’S CONDUCT AND A LAWER’S VERDICT

 By CHINNARAJ JOSEPH   

First it was the Division Bench verdict on Dr. Kalyani Mathivanan unseating her as the Vice Chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University. I called it as a relief and reassurance for those who fight in the name of academic freedom, accountability and excellence. I consciously made this public statement not only because of the serious legal impairment caused by the Search Committee and the Chancellor in making the appointment of the Vice Chancellor, but also because of the ethically questionable conduct of Dr. Mathivanan before and after she assumed office.

Then there came the anticlimax, as the Supreme Court of India stayed the Division Bench order after it allowed her Special Leave Petition (SLP). But anyone could easily realize that admitting of SLP is purely a discretionary action of the SC under Art.136 as long as the case provides a special circumstance and involves substantial question of law and the Constitution. In common parlance, the SC has just opened its front door to let in Mathivanan so that she can present her appeal in about four weeks.

But these are matters too subtle and intellectually too sophisticated for poor Mathivanan to understand. She thought that it is a simple stunt she banged-up in the Supreme Court. For the members of her croneydom in the university, it looked like a Himalayan victory over her enemies. (Here irony plays. Who are her enemies? First, it is her conscience. Second are those petitioners of PIL who wanted to hold the mirror of law and invoke judicial conscience in a democracy. Third are the judges who play the role of umpires who call foul or allow a point or temporarily halt the game before it resumes).

Anyway, in Madurai, celebration of anything from ‘a young girl attaining puberty’ to ‘an old soul attaining vaikundam’ is a matter of noisy and ocular celebration. Thousands easily congregate. When venerable VC amma arrived at the airport with her daughter there was a sizable crowd to receive her, garland her, lead her in a cavalcade of cars (carrying some Principals and professors too) and then burst crackers as soon as she entered the University Campus and further shower flowers and slogans. The buffoonery entered a melodramatic turn as the victoria walked the red carpet to the office as the waiting school children waved their hands with flowers. This was the final minute of solemnity before ‘university’s potential for excellence’ exploded like a cosmic pod throwing splendorous colours. This has become news.

This is the point where the third verdict, namely the verdict of her counsel Mr. Isaac Mohanlal came to be pronounced as he not only did withdraw himself from all the cases relating to the university in protest but also did make a very incisive and meaningful public statement condemning her uncouth and arrogant muscle flexing. When I read that in the morning newspaper, I was delighted because such a turn of event very rarely happens in our cynical milieu. I want to congratulate Mr. Isaac Mohanlal for two reasons: first, as a seasoned lawyer and leader in the High Court Bar, he has stood up to uphold the sanctity and the civility demanded by the Supreme Court order that permitted the VC to resume office temporarily; secondly, Mr. Mohanlal by making a categorical public statement condemning the behavior of the VC, has risen much above the role of an ordinary lawyer thereby becoming a public intellectual. The latter is certainly a bigger honour. This deserves a lengthy discussion in the public interest.

The first question people who have known Mohanlal as a lawyer of eminence and public figure raise is “Should he in the first place have argued Mathvanan’s case at all?”

The question itself is misplaced and stems from the anger people hold against Mathivanan for the kind appointment she secured. She has also angered a great many by her style of managing the university and by her public conduct as a VC.

One ought to know that a lawyer need not normally look into the moral or political conduct of his or her client but mainly into the legal right he or she can secure for the client through the court. That is what his professional code would advocate. This does not mean however that the advocate needs to be morally insensitive or politically naïve.

In an adversarial system of dispensing justice the knowledge, wit, ability and the ‘influence’ (or ‘presence’) of an advocate arguing the case are important. What we as lay public would call something illegal in a cavalier fashion can become legal in a court of law with the help of a good lawyer and in the same way, what we presume legal can be rendered irrelevant if not illegal. This is why we make our choice of a ‘good’ lawyer. Also this is why we as clients often lament that what comes through the law courts are ‘judicial orders’ and ‘not always justice’.

 Lawyers and clients often provide the worst irony of social situations. Clients culpable of crime, illegality and immorality can always go to a good lawyer and avail his or her professional services and manage to even escape law. This injures the moral conscience of the common man and they accuse lawyers as siding with bad elements of the society. We will return to this irony later.

Though Mathivanan’s position as VC was morally, politically and even legally vitiated and such knowledge was within the public domain, Mathivanan in choosing Mohanlal only exercised her right and of course wisdom. Mohanlal accepted just another brief.

 In the public domain, Mathivanan’s case is perceived to be a bad case. Mathivanan for heaven’s sake knew the difference between what it means to hold the position of a Professor and that of an Associate Professor in a college. It is a common knowledge that before every UGC salary revision, every teacher in a college signs an undertaking as to what position she or he is entitled to hold and what designation she is permitted to use. For Mathivanan to have used the designation ‘Professor’ that too before a selection committee prima facie is seen as an illegality of first order. How this was overcome by the biased selection committee has in fact become the central plot of the case. Any further observation would be sub judice.

Dr. Mathivanan being a political breed, after assuming office showed her real colour. There were allegations of corruption in appointments, regular witch hunting of those who questioned her, victimization of research scholars for demanding better facilities, promotion of sycophancy bordering insanity, cronyism supported by thuggery and finally unleashing of violence.

 People of mediocre ability first desacralize and ‘deliberately violate the system’ in order to make it look ordinary so that they can comfortably manage it as their mediocre intelligence and attendant skills permit. Merit becomes the victim and the meritorious exit. Dr. Mathivanan is an artist par excellent in this trade of undoing. In two years, MKU, a university with potential for excellence has emptied itself into dead sand of politics.

Her public demonstration in response to Supreme Court stay is another facet of ‘undoing’ of a noble institution. ‘Desacralizing’ and ‘undoing’ are the strategies of the mediocre to manage the unmanageable.

Now let me address the lawyer’s dilemma. Any good lawyer will be constantly aware of the conflict between his professional demands and the larger public good his actions come to affect with negative tradeoffs. Only a very few rise beyond the narrow professional interest and address the public cause at a personal cost. They are the ones who qualify to be Emersonian public intellectuals who say profession is for mere living, and public cause is for realizing the total being. They are the ones who unshackle the discursive barriers of the profession to speak in a common man’s voice, act in public interest and constantly strive to answer a deeper personal quest.

Well done Mr. Isaac Mohanlal!

                                                                               14.O7.2014