PIL plea on deemed varsities: next hearing likely in July
June 7, 2009: The Hindu
New Delhi: With its decision to put on hold the grant of ‘Deemed University’ status to new educational institutions, the Centre is expected to file its response in the Supreme Court in July on a PIL plea seeking regulation of these universities.
The court has granted time for filing response and the petition is expected to be listed in July for further hearing before a Bench headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari after the summer vacation.
The petitioner, Viplav Sharma, an advocate, in 2006 challenged the norms for conferment of deemed university status, and even as the matter was pending for the last three years, the University Grants Commission had recommended to the Centre the grant of Deemed University status to over 50 institutions, the bulk of them in Tamil Nadu without proper recommendation from the All-India Council for Technical Education.
“This does not include over 30 ‘satellite campuses,’ which were notified by the HRD Ministry under the ambit of the parent deemed university.¶
The petitioner also brought to the notice of the court another questionable practice — an attempt to bring in other sister institutions under the ambit of the parent Deemed University. It was pointed out that the character of the constituent unit was at a par with the parent university for all purposes and hence the same amount of caution, if not more, must be exercised. Every application under this category had to be considered as an independent one for conferment of Deemed University status.
The institutions which obtained the status of Deemed-to-be University in the last two to three years had opened centres against the provisions of law throughout the country without any approval either from the State or from the HRD Ministry or the UGC. Further, according to the petitioner, against all norms even new institutions had started applying for the status even before they could get affiliation. During the last hearing, the Centre informed the court that draft regulations were ready and stringent conditions would be put in place for conferment of deemed university status.
