Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

High Court upholds NCTE's supremacy

Special Correspondent

Quashes order on panel to probe "deficiencies" in private teacher-training institutes "The source from which the State draws its powers to inspect or to find facts is shrouded in doubt."

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has upheld the National Council for Teacher Education's (NCTE) supremacy with regard to the maintenance of standards in teacher-training institutes. "Without there being specific provisions regarding the power of inspection, the State cannot interfere with the autonomy of the institutions," ruled Justice Prabha Sridevan.

Quashing a June 21 order passed by the DMK Government, constituting a high-level committee to inquire into the "deficiencies" in private teacher-training institutes and B.Ed. colleges, Mrs. Justice Sridevan said: "It is clear that the power to inspect is given only to the NCTE and... the role of the Council cannot be encroached upon by an executive fiat."

She said the manner in which all the institutions had been dealt with one stroke itself made the G.O. "vulnerable to attack," adding that no material had been produced to show that the infrastructural facilities in all these institutions were defective.

Maintaining that no explicit power of inspection had been granted under any of the Rules and Regulations, the Judge said the Government could not list all institutions in the State and proceed to inspect them "tarring them en masse with the same brush."

Referring to the fact that the committee had been constituted to go into the "irregularities" in the functioning of these institutions, the judge said the G.O. had been "unhappily worded."

As for Advocate-General R. Viduthalai's query as to why these institutions should fight shy of being inspected, Mrs. Justice Sridevan said: "When the appointment of the high-level committee itself is without any constitutional competence, is totally without jurisdiction and is clearly arbitrary, no institution, however flawless its infrastructural facilities may be, is bound to submit itself for the inspection. The duty to submit oneself for inspection would arise only when there is the power to carry out such inspection. The State is unable to show that it has any such power."

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