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Tuesday, Jul 15, 2008
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Centre promises policy on deemed universities

J. Venkatesan

“Status being sought by institutions that have no infrastructure and adequately qualified staff”

New Delhi: The Union government on Monday informed the Supreme Court that a policy to regulate and streamline deemed universities, including the criteria for conferring the deemed university status, will soon be put in place.

Additional Solicitor-General (ASG) Vikas Singh made this submission before a Bench, consisting of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and H.S. Bedi, hearing a petition filed by advocate Viplav Sharma, seeking proper guidelines to prevent the mushrooming of deemed universities.

Draft guidelines

The ASG said draft University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines were lying with the government. When Mr. Justice Bhandari asked the ASG to file reply in two weeks, he said, “the government is in a flux and no decision could be taken.” The ASG said at least five weeks time was required to come out with the policy decision.

Mr. Justice Bhandari told the ASG: “The situation is so bad that the matter requires immediate attention. This is an extremely important matter.”

Counsel Sanjay Hegde said that during the pendency of this petition, over 25 institutions were granted the deemed university status.

The Bench, while posting the petition for final hearing to August 25, asked the ASG and counsel for the UGC to file their response in the meanwhile.

Strict scrutiny

During the last hearing, the Centre told the court that once the new regulations were in place, private institutions would be subjected to strict scrutiny before grant of the deemed university status. Foreign universities would also be brought under the purview of the regulations.

The petition said the ‘Deemed to be University status’ was being sought by all sorts of institutions that had no infrastructure, no facility and no adequately qualified staff.

The trend of establishing deemed universities had gained ground and new developments in education were being exploited commercially, bypassing all safeguards including approvals by the State governments and other authorities such as the All-India Council for Technical Education, the Medical Council of India and the Dental Council of India.

High quality

Contending that the Centre and the UGC were conferring the status arbitrarily, the petitioner sought a direction to the respondents to confer it only on institutions that produced high quality research papers and professionals of global acceptability.

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