New Delhi, March 19 (IANS) All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director P. Venugopal told the Delhi High Court Monday that the upper age limit of 62 for superannuation does not apply to him as he was appointed for a period of five years.

Advocate Maninder Singh appearing for Venugopal before a bench of Justices Swatanter Kumar and H.R. Malhotra said the statute of the AIIMS did not specify any upper age limit for the director.

Singh said the government had submitted before the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the director of the Post-Graduate Institute (PGI) at Chandigarh could treat patients as a professor in public interest, whereas in the case of Venugopal it was pursuing different yardsticks.

"It was mutuality of both functions in the part of a director of such medical institutes," he said.

The arguments remained inconclusive. The central government, AIIMS and the institute's governing body had filed a petition challenging the November 2006 order of the single bench, which had ruled against Venugopal's dismissal.

The government has charged Venugopal of financial mismanagement, irregularities in administration, parochial attitude and tacit support to the strike during last year's agitation against the caste-based quota in education.

In July 2006, a decision was taken by Health Minister and AIIMS president Ambumani Ramadoss supported by a majority of the 17 members of the Governing Body to sack Venugopal.