Let’s take the matter of academic promotion. Every public university has a set of prescribed criteria for promotion. This is often amended and updated, responding to the academic landscape and ratified by the respective governing bodies such as the syndicate and the academic council.

These criteria exist precisely to ensure that the process is objective, consistent, and insulated from personal discretion. A faculty member who meets those criteria has a legitimate professional interest in being assessed fairly against them. Under Articles 27 and 29 of the Constitution of Bangladesh, every citizen is entitled to equal protection of the law and equality of opportunity in public employment. Promotion in a public university is public employment. These constitutional guarantees are enforceable and not simply decorative.

Here some crucial queries arise: what happens when a promotion process goes wrong? When a review board applies criteria that are not in the university’s own ordinance? When documentary evidence that was officially solicited is then disregarded at the point of decision with no explanation? When the outcome is neither communicated nor explained to the applicant for months, despite repeated formal and written requests? What legal remedy exists, and how accessible is it to the aggrieved individuals?