By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
More than a week after the Uttarakhand High Court invalidated the appointment of Prakash Chandra Dhayani as Managing Director (MD) of the state-run Power Transmission Corporation of Uttarakhand Limited (PTCUL), he was finally removed on Friday in the wake of the contempt proceedings.
In the fast-paced developments, the High Court in the morning issued contempt against the government asking state Energy Secretary R Meenakshi Sundaram to appear before it as Dhyani had allegedly refused to accept the Court’s order. Buckling under pressure, the government issued a notification in the evening removing Dhyani from the post.
Earlier, a division bench of Justice Ashish Naithani and Justice Subhash Upadhyay on Feb 19 held that the appointment of Dhyani violated rule 9-A as the educational qualifications prescribed in the 2021 rules are mandatory unless a legally valid exemption is granted by the government. Dhyani was serving MD of PTCUL since Sept 10, 2022.
The petition was filed by Chief Engineer Rajiv Gupta and others, challenging the order dated September 10, 2022, by which Dhayani was given additional charge as Managing Director.
According to the petitioners, since the regular selection process was pending, the charge should have been assigned to the senior-most eligible officer. It was argued that under Rule 9-A of the Uttarakhand Selection and Appointment of Managing Director and Directors Process Determination Rules, 2021, the post requires an engineering graduate qualification, which Dhayani allegedly did not possess.
Significantly, all the representations against Dhyani were ignored by the government as he was close to the powers that be, alleged Anil Baluni, an RTI activist, who was actively working to expose alleged corruption in PTCUL.