Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Supreme-Court-of-India

In a move, that might impact thousands of students, Supreme Court on Friday declared distance engineering programs offered by universities invalid and ordered a CBI probe into the process which allowed such programs to function. This decision by Supreme Court is expected to impact thousands of students who had enrolled for distance engineering courses post 2001.

The supreme court decision mentioned that the distance engineering programmes are not approved by UGC (University Grant Commission) and AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education). The approval given for such courses by DEC (Distance Education Council) has also been termed invalid.

The order by Supreme Court has instructed the universities to not to provide distance courses in technical streams such as engineering without the permission from AICTE and UGC. The apex court has also ordered a CBI probe against the officials who allowed these programs to run for all these years.

The Supreme Court order will impact the correspondence engineering courses offered by four deemed universities, which are, JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Institute of Advanced Studies in Education in Rajasthan, Allahabad Agricultural Institute and Vinayaka Mission’s Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu. This order was passed after both, UGC and AICTE told the court that these courses were not permitted. These institutions were represented by UGC’s counsel and ASG Maninder Singh and AICTE advocate Anil Soni.

Giving a bit of relief to the students who took admission in these courses between 2001 and 2005, the supreme court said that AICTE will conduct an examination to approve the degrees of students who took admission between 2001 and 2005. DCE was still in process of reviewing the application on whether or not correspondence courses in engineering be allowed. However, the court did not leave any room for the students who enrolled in these courses after 2005, stating that those students took admission knowing fully well that these courses were not permitted by the organisations such as AICTE and UGC.

With this decision, the court also directed the central government to create a mechanism to regulate deemed universities and added that UGC has completely failed to stop commercialisation of education. Also, it has asked the central government to draft a committee, which will submit its report on whether or not to allow these universities to function as deemed universities.

By Prithviraj Singh Chauhan

Part time journalist, full-time observer. Editor-in-Chief at The Indian Wire. I cover updates related to business and startups.