Bengaluru: The High Court has ordered issue of notice to the State on a petition questioning legality of the government’s directive to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) to deposit around Rs. 200 crore from the university’s Rs. 580 corpus fund with the Public Works Department towards construction of a health city campus.
Justice A.S. Bopanna passed the order on the petition filed by four Senate members and one Syndicate member of the RGUHS.
The petitioners claimed that the government is illegally forcing the university to release money from the corpus fund by wrongly interpreting the RGUHS Act.
They have questioned various communications sent by the State between May 17, 2016, and September 29, 2017, directing the university to release funds for the setting up of a health city, comprising new administrative blocks for the university, medical, dental, nursing, and pharmacy colleges; a 250-bed hi-tech hospital; and a 750-bed general hospital, at Ramanagaram.
The government, in one of its recent communications, threatened to take coercive action against the varsity if money was not released besides holding it responsible for legal proceedings that may arise for not releasing funds to the Public Works Department (PWD) towards construction works being taken up by a contractor chosen by the State.