The State government on Wednesday asserted before the Madras High Court that it was fully competent to direct deemed universities in the State to obtain no objection certificates (NOCs) from it for conducting agriculture and allied courses.
Appearing before Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, Advocate General Vijay Narayan said agricultural research and education falls under Entry 14 of List II (State list) of the seventh schedule to the Constitution.
He pointed out that Entry 66 of List I (Union list) in the seventh schedule states that co-ordination and determination of standards in institutions for higher education or research and scientific and technical institutions would fall under the domain of the Centre.
However, Entry 14 of List II makes it clear that “agriculture, including agricultural education and research, protection against pests and prevention of plant diseases,” would fall under the domain of the State government and the State would be fully competent to control those subjects.
The A-G made the submissions during the hearing of a writ petition filed by Karunya Institute of Technology which had challenged a government order issued on July 28 directing all deemed universities to obtain NOC within six months and not to admit new students till then.
He informed the first Division Bench that two other deemed universities SRM Institute of Technology and Vellore Institute of Technology had filed individual writ petitions challenging the same GO and obtained an interim stay from a single judge of the court on Tuesday.
When the Chief Justice asked why were those writ petitions listed before a single judge when the present petition had been listed before the Division Bench, the A-G said he was also equally mystified as to why the Registry listed the cases before different judges.
He stated that the interim stay had been obtained by those two universities even without serving papers on the State Government Pleader’s office. “We came to know of the interim order only through a newspaper report this morning,” the A-G added.
After hearing him, the Chief Justice’s Bench called for an explanation from the Registry for having listed the writ petitions on the same issue before different judges and also directed it to list all the three writ petitions together before the Division Bench on October 6.