HC warns of interim stay on scrapping of Anna University courses if explanation not given

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Tuesday warned of granting an interim stay on Anna University’s decision to cancel two courses if authorities fail to provide a proper written explanation on the move to the court by Wednesday. 

The court also issued notices to the State and the varsity to respond to a plea filed by a student challenging the decision to scrap the MTech Biotechnology and MTech Computational Biology programmes for the 2020-21 academic year.

The University, owing to differences regarding the central government's insistence that it follow the Centre's 49.5 per cent reservation and not Tamil Nadu’s 69 per cent quota policy in admission, scrapped the two courses.

On Tuesday when the plea came up for hearing before Justice B Pugalendhi, advocate Saravanan Annadurai, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that the futures of the 43 students, who enrolled for the courses, are now in jeopardy. He stressed that an interim stay be granted on the varsity's decision.
However, the counsel for Anna University said that he is yet to receive the petitioner's papers to seek written instructions on the issue from the University.

The court, hearing the submissions, said that a detailed reply is sought in the issue on why the University went ahead with the cancellation and whether any new courses have been rolled out to address the problem of the students left in the lurch.

The court also said that if the written instructions fail to satisfy the court then it will permit the petitioner’s interim plea of granting a stay challenging the cancellation.

According to the petitioner, R Chitra, the students who have prepared hard for the course and taken the GAT-B examination are left with an empty future to grapple with. It will not be out of place to point out that after the advent of the Covid-19 the demand for these courses had gone up, the petitioner added.