Judiciary should not be seen as interfering in executive's work: SC

The bureaucracy's grouse about judicial interference in its domain could somewhat ease as the Supreme Court on Tuesday (2009) said the executive should be allowed to function properly and the judiciary could not be seen as interfering in its work. This observation came from a Bench comprising Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and Aftab Alam when a grievance was made that Baba Farid University had not allotted two seats to the 50% all-India quota in dental PG course for this academic year.

Nearly 25 years ago, the concept of all-India quota in government-run medical and dental colleges came into being through the Supreme Court's judgment in the Pradeep Jain case in 1984. It got crystallized in its subsequent judgments - Dinesh Thakur I and II -- by which 15% all-India quota in undergraduate courses and 25% quota in PG courses was reserved to be filled through a Common Entrance Test (CET). The PG quota was raised to 50% in the Saurav Chaudhary case.

The Bench knew that the all-India quota was created through the judgments of the Supreme Court but still felt that enough monitoring had been done for a quarter of a century and now, it should be left to the executive to implement it and no one should rush to the apex court on matters relating to admissions.
"We have a great reservation about this. We are fixing calendars and admission schedule. Laying down broad guidelines is one thing, but monitoring admission to each and every college, we think, is not a judicial function," the Bench said.

Finally it admitted its contribution to the breakdown of the executive link in implementation of the guidelines laid down in the judgments by entertaining numerous applications relating to admissions.
"We have also contributed to the breaking down by interfering with executive functions," it said.

Source: The Times of India (2009)

Private colleges playing with future of students: SC

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ticked off education regulators for the casual manner of giving recognition to private professional colleges. The court charged the regulators with disregarding the criteria laid down for the recognition.

The bench comprising Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and Aftab Alam was concerned about the practice of private institutions enrolling thousands of students even before they get the mandatory recognition. The plight of these students is then invoked, it said, to wangle recognition from regulators who are not keen to apply the standards laid down in the book. The private institutions cite the students' career as grounds to legalise the admissions they had done unauthorizedly, it said. The bench then went on to call, echoing the remark made by the court in a similar case, the institutions - "masked phantoms" - which do more harm to the education system than good. It also sounded a loud warning against the current policy premium on privatization, pointing to the pitfalls involved. Privatization of education was all right, but this sort of blatant violation of statutory requirements needed for starting a professional college by private parties amounted to playing with the future of thousands of students, it said.

The observation came during the hearing of a petition of a private institution, S V N College of Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, challenging a High Court order which had restrained it from admitting students without following the criteria. While the SC bench agreed to issue notice to the Madhya Pradesh government, it concurred with the HC's concern over the perils of unregulated privatization of education sector. "We fully share the anguish of the HC," Justices Reddy and Alam said as they refused to stay the HC order.

They did not relent when counsel for S V N College, a self-financed institute, senior advocate R Venkataramani and advocate Jasbir Malik, argued that it had the requisite recognition of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). The bench said: “Our observation that regulatory bodies are casually granting recognition applied to the NCTE as well.”

For the regulators, the criticism could not have come at a worse time. They have been under intense attack, and there are indications to suggest that the recommendation of the Yashpal Committee for doing away with UGC, MCI and the Dental Council of India may find favour with the government.

The HC had referred to a 1986 judgment of the apex court emphasizing the need for proper inspection of the private institutes before grant of recognition on the grounds that ``private institutions unauthorizedly established were invariably ill-housed, ill-staffed and ill-equipped'' and deprecated the HCs which allowed such institutes to admit students.

Source: The Times of India

State can regulate admissions in private unaided colleges: SC

The SC in 2009 on Wednesday said the state has a responsibility to maintain high standards of education and is hence competent to regulate admissions even in unaided private professional colleges.

This important order came from a vacation Bench comprising Justices Markandey Katju and Deepak Verma, which ordered that private unaided medical and dental colleges in Madhya Pradesh would keep aside up to 50% of their seats to accommodate candidates successful in the state-conducted common entrance test.
The Bench said despite three constitution Benches of SC- one comprising 11 judges, another 5 judges and still another with 7 judges — dealing with the issue of regulating affairs of educational institutions- minority, aided and unaided and non-minority- there appeared to be still some grey areas that needed clarification.

While the 11-judge Bench in the T M A. Pai case had said that greater autonomy has to be granted to unaided institutions compared to the aided ones, the 7-judge Bench in the P A Inamdar case had said it would be unfair to apply the same logic to aided and unaided colleges.

Referring to Inamdar case judgment, the Bench said it was said if the admission process adopted by an unaided private college did not conform to the triple test- fair, transparency and reasonable fee-structure- then the state would have an occasion to interfere in it. The Justice Katju-headed Bench said the 7-judge Bench did not specify the body which would determine whether the admission process of a private unaided college was at fault.

“It can’t be left to the unilateral decision of the state to say that a private institution has failed the triple test. This will give an unbridled power to the state to say that a private institution has failed the triple test,” it said. It said: “To strike a balance between the responsibilities of the state as against the interest of the private unaided professional colleges, the court has to use its creativity.”

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi stressed the need to allow Association of Private Dental and Medical Colleges to fill seats through entrance test conducted by the association. However, MP Counsel, senior advocate Ravi Shankar Prasad, argued that the state had already conducted entrance test. Striking a balance, the court said as an interim measure for this academic year, private unaided colleges would leave out 50% of their seats to be filled by candidates in merit list drawn through entrance test conducted by the government.

Source: The Times of India