Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) The Supreme Court Thursday declined a plea by the Human Resource Development ministry to restrain 44 deemed universities - facing the prospect of being derecognised - from admitting students for academic session 2010-11 commencing July.
A bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra also declined a plea by the Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam that the admission for the coming academic year to these deemed universities should be subject to the final outcome of the hearing of the matter.

The court also agreed to examine the validity of the ministry’s decision to derecognise the 44 deemed universities, which contended that the University Grants Commission was the statutory authority to deal with such matters and was alone competent to recognise or derecognise universities.

While declining to pass the orders sought by the Ministry, the court said that validity of the P.N. Tandon Committee - on whose report the 44 deemed universities are sought to be derecognised - is itself under challenge. The committee’s report had held the academic standard of these 44 deemed universities far below what was expected of them.

“The constitution of the committee is itself under challenge… it has to be adjudicated first. There is no point in passing any injunction. It would not be appropriate for us to pass any injunction,” the court said.

The court also observed that the deemed universities under threat contended that Tandon himself was heading a deemed university and it was improper for him to head a high-powered committee set up to decide the fate of similar institutions.