The Madras High Court on Monday directed All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) not to take any coercive action against a section of ‘deemed to be universities’ that had approached the court through individual writ petitions challenging the council’s recent public notice inviting applications from existing as well as proposed technical education institutions to conduct courses for the academic session 2018-19.
Justice R. Mahadevan passed the interim order on a batch of individual writ petitions filed by Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Dental Sciences, Dr. MGR Educational and Research Institute, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science and Vel Tech Institute of Science and Technology among a few other institutions which were also aggrieved against the public notice.
According to the petitioners, the notice specifically stated that the ‘deemed to be universities’ seeking approval for the first time from AICTE, in compliance of an order passed by the Supreme Court on November 3, 2017, should submit an application as a new technical institution. Contending that ‘deemed to be universities’ need not obtain any such approval, they claimed that the notice had been issued due to misinterpretation of the apex court judgement. In an affidavit filed on behalf of VIT, its Registrar K. Sathiyanarayanan said: “The AICTE has no power to seek its approval from the petitioner deemed to be university as a new technical institution... The petitioner university is very well maintaining academic standard higher than [that] prescribed by the AICTE and competing with world class universities.” He also contended that inviting applications from his institution and registering it as a new technical institution would affect the efforts taken by the petitioner to compete with world class universities besides creating confusion among the students and degrading the educational policies of the government.
