Hi,
I am currently applying for Phd. The university asked for referees and they namely requested the MSc. supervisor to be the 1st referee. I am not in good conditions with him. What do you advise me to do in this case?

What do you mean about "Not in a good condition"? 1) he was not happy about your performance from a pure technical perspective, or 2) Two of you had some conflicts beyond the field of research.

If it is the first one, you should not worry about that too much. You can ask him to be your referee.

@ywan459: It is both.
@TreeofLife: If it is my choice, I would select some other people. But what is the university is asking specifically for the last supervisor details? Probably, if I ignored them & provided someone else's info., they would consider this dishonesty?

They normally say something like: 'provide 2 references and one of them should be from your previous supervisor'. Key would being 'should'. It doesn't say 'must'. It's not dishonest to provide another reference, it's going against their request. Dishonest would be giving them a reference saying it's from your supervisor but it's not.

They will wonder why you haven't provided a reference from your supervisor, and then you can explain.

Surely it's better than actually getting a reference from him and him indicating you shouldn't be taken on because you are technically incompetent and difficult to get along with? Who is going to want you as a student after reading that? Unless this supervisor is disliked by the other people in your field and known to be a poor supervisor they are going trust his word, so you are better off not giving them this opportunity.

Does anyone else on this forum have any personal experience of this?