Pune: A vacation bench of the Bombay High Court has ordered an interim stay on the state and PMC census authorities’ notices to Pune-based Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth (TMV), a deemed university, to appoint its employees as enumerators and supervisors for the census 2026-27 till the final disposal of a petition filed by TMV.The bench of Justice Shyam C Chandak and Justice Shreeram V Shirsat on Friday also restrained the govt’s directorate of census operation and Pune Municipal Corporation’s city census department from compelling the TMV to relieve additional teaching and non-teaching staff for census duties during the deemed university’s ongoing examination and evaluation period.The HC has posted the matter for the next hearing on July 31. Advocate Satyam Nimbalkar, one of the lawyers representing the TMV, told TOI, “We challenged the notices while bringing to the court’s notice that the university examinations were underway and, in such circumstances, requiring teachers from unaided institutions to perform census duties would adversely affect academic activities.”Nimbalkar said, “We also argued that teachers and non-teaching employees of unaided institutions cannot be compelled to undertake census work in the manner directed by the authorities.”The bench referred to senior advocate Vaibhav Joglekar’s submission on behalf of the petitioner (TMV) that the university has about 300 teaching and non-teaching officers/staff and the respondent (census) authorities requested it to spare the services of 110 officers/staff members for census work.The university did entertain the request by providing 13 staff members from its aided section and 15 from the unaided section to the respondent authorities. However, the latter requested 82 additional members of staff.Joglekar submitted before the bench that the request cannot be accepted considering that TMV has been running 82 courses and the examination was underway for about 3,000 students and the exam results are to be declared in a time-bound manner.The bench said, “Considering the aforesaid submissions, at this stage, there shall be an ad interim stay in terms of prayer clauses (d) and (e) till the next date. Stand over to July 31 2026, to be kept along with Writ Petition (L) No. 15009 of 2026.”
