BANGALORE: For thousands of nursing seat aspirants making a beeline to the State every year, the Karnataka High Court's direction not to approve admissions made this year by 180 nursing colleges, has come as a big sigh of relief.

At the mercy of agents — both authorised and unauthorised — the seat aspirants had often ended up in colleges that made a mockery of basic infrastructure and teaching faculty.

Even before the Dr. C.M. Gurumurthy Task Force on Paramedical Education submitted its report (the court order is based on this report), the State Government had come under fire from academics and professionals, who wanted to know why about 100 nursing colleges were approved in 2004 and another 45 in 2005 when Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) had disapproved of them for want of adequate infrastructure and qualified teachers.

The university's Local Inspection Committees (LICs) had rejected the applications of these colleges to start B.Sc. Nursing courses after spot visits revealed that they lacked the basic infrastructure and teachers. Yet, the colleges managed to get the government's green signal. The loophole: according to Section 45 (5) of the RGUHS Act, the government can override a university decision. Besides, most institutions were not attached to a hospital as required by the Indian Nursing Council (INC) guidelines. The practice of the government overriding the university on matters of college approval has been going for years, sources told The Hindu .

Nursing colleges with an intake of 50 students had to meet certain minimum standards stipulated by the RGUHS in 1992 and the revised norms of INC. The LICs had to ensure that these standards were strictly maintained.

Currently, 236 nursing colleges are affiliated to RGUHS. Admissions to these colleges were completed on September 30, with 70 per cent of seats under management quota and 30 per cent under government quota. While most of the private unaided colleges managed to fill their quota of seats, about 3,500 seats under the government quota remained unfilled.

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