The government has silently junked the approval granted by then President Pranab Mukherjee for the appointment of scientist Anil Kakodkar as IIT Roorkee chairperson, after sitting tight for three years, and appointed another.

Without even getting the previous approval withdrawn, the education ministry moved a fresh proposal recently and secured President Ram Nath Kovind’s approval for B.V.R. Mohan Reddy’s appointment to the post. Reddy, chairperson of IIT Hyderabad, got additional charge of IIT Roorkee last week.

Government sources speculated that an old spat with Smriti Irani when she was HRD minister may have come back to haunt Kakodkar’s chances.

They said the three-year wait on the matter, and the government’s failure to get Mukherjee’s July 2017 approval formally withdrawn by the President’s office, possibly owed to a desire to keep the issue away from the limelight.

A former official who had served at Rashtrapati Bhavan during the tenure of President K.R. Narayanan said appointing a new IIT chairperson without getting the previous approval withdrawn was legally questionable.

“Once the President approves a proposal, it should be implemented,” he said.

“If the President has approved a proposal but the notification has not been issued, and the government wants to change the decision, it should request supersession (withdrawal) of the earlier approval.”

Education ministry officials confirmed that no request had been sent to the President’s office to have the previous order withdrawn.

“If the previous approval has not been superseded, it means the approval stands. How could the ministry seek approval for a fresh proposal, then? Legally it is an asynchronous decision,” the former Rashtrapati Bhavan official said.

Prakash Javadekar’s HRD ministry had obtained Kakodkar’s consent and proposed his appointment, and Mukherjee had approved it days before his term as President ended. No official reason has been cited why the appointment order was never issued.

However, in 2015, Kakodkar had a public falling out with Irani over the selection of directors for certain IITs, and subsequently resigned as IIT Bombay chairperson.

Kakodkar at the time headed the search-cum-selection panel that was to pick new directors for the IITs in Patna, Bhubaneswar and Ropar.

In an interview to NDTV in November 2015, Irani had claimed that Kakodkar had tried to push “his own candidates”. Kakodkar had described Irani’s allegation as “false”.

On Monday, Kakodkar declined comment on the latest development. “I have nothing to comment,” he said.

An email sent to the education ministry brought no response.

In September 2018, the President’s office had asked the government about the progress made in implementing Kakodkar’s appointment, cleared more than a year earlier.

At times the President’s office may of its own accord withdraw an earlier approval, as was done for a Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor in 2017. But this did not happen with Kakodkar.