'Made Me do Illegal...': Kerala Guv Blames CM Vijayan for Pressuring Him to Reappoint Kannur VC

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan on Thursday accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of pressuring him to reappoint Gopinath Ravindran as the vice chancellor (VC) of Kannur University.

Khan said that state Higher Education Minister R Bindu was not to be blamed as the CM Vijayan used her for seeking reappointment of Ravindran.

The Governor’s response comes after the Supreme Court quashed the Kerala government’s decision to re-appoint Ravindran as the VC of Kannur University.

The Kerala Governor hit out at the CM Vijayan’s Office, declaring that the “pressure was from CMO” and added that Vijayan’s “legal advisor” tried to influence him.

“It is wrong to blame the Education Minister (who) was used by the Chief Minister. It was not the minister who came to my office but an individual who claimed to be the Chief Minister’s legal advisor,” Khan said, according to NDTV.

“One OSD and a man who claimed to be the legal advisor to the CM… They brought a letter from the Education Minister as chancellor proposing that she should be appointed backed by the opinion of the Advocate General duly signed. I said that what you are asking me to do is illegal… I wrote a letter to the CM that what he had made me do was illegal,” he added.

A division bench of the Kerala High Court had on February 23 last year dismissed an appeal against a single-judge order upholding the re-appointment of Ravindran as the VC of the university, saying it was done in accordance with the law and that he was not ”an usurper to the post”.

The impugned judgement and the order passed by the high court dated February 23, 2022 is hereby set aside and as a consequence, the notification dated November 23, 2021 reappointing the respondent number 4 (Ravindran) as the vice chancellor of the Kannur University is hereby set aside, the top court said in its judgement.