Madras High Court relieves retired judge serving as interim administrator of a Siddha medical college for 19 years

Shocked to find that a retired justice of the Madras High Court had continued arsenic the interim head of a registered nine for 19 agelong years, the Madras High Court relieved him of the station and requested him to manus implicit the medication to the elected president.

A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and Mohammed Shaffiq said that the continuance of the interim head for implicit 19 years “shocks the conscience of the court.” It ordered that the medication beryllium transferred to the elected president wrong 2 weeks.

The Bench besides placed connected grounds its appreciation for the 19 years of work rendered by retired justice A. Ramamurthi successful administering the Kanniyakumari-based Akila Thiruvidancore Siddha Vaidhya Sangam (ATSVS), which runs a Siddha aesculapian assemblage and hospital.

Though the counsel for the interim head feared the anticipation of maladminstration arsenic determination were rival claims implicit the presidentship of ATSVS, the judges said it was for the aggrieved parties acrophobic to situation the predetermination of L. Noelraj astatine the wide assemblage conscionable held connected May 10, 2025.

The judges besides refused to judge the counsel’s different submission that the ATSVS Siddha Medical College and Hospital had received the ‘best instauration award’ nether the medication of the retired justice and hence, helium whitethorn beryllium allowed to proceed arsenic its interim administrator.

“Primarily, courts are not expected to tally the medication of backstage institutions. Their jurisdiction extends lone to resoluteness the disputes and guarantee lawful governance, not to perpetually negociate the affairs of the registered societies oregon associations,” the Division Bench wrote.

Clarifying that courts name interim administrators lone to code immoderate turmoil successful the absorption and to reconstruct antiauthoritarian functioning of the relation astatine the earliest, the judges said that the powerfulness to administer an instauration indispensable yet vest with duly elected bodies and not with court-appointed officers.

Authoring the verdict, Justice Subramaniam besides said the prolonged continuation of an interim head deprives the members of an relation of their close to ballot and elite office-bearers, the close to enactment successful the management, and the close to clasp the absorption accountable done elections.

“The agelong continuance of administrators, sometimes adjacent for decades, offend the precise tone of democracy,” the justice said. The observations were made portion allowing a lawsuit filed by Mr. Noelraj urging the tribunal to framework a strategy for the medication of ATSVS.

He brought to the announcement of the Division Bench that the High Court had appointed Mr. Ramamurthi arsenic interim head successful 2006. The assignment was made pursuing a civilian suit filed successful 2005. However, that suit was transferred to the City Civil Court successful 2019 and was subsequently withdrawn.

Now that the wide assemblage of ATSVS had conducted elections, the medication of the nine indispensable beryllium handed implicit to the elected office-bearers, helium insisted.