The Madras High Court on Tuesday said that all new admissions made by deemed universities in the State in agriculture and allied courses would be subject to the result of writ petitions filed in the court challenging the Tamil Nadu government’s insistence on obtaining no-objection certificates from it after proving availability of requisite infrastructure.
Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy passed the interim order on a petition filed by the Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences.
The judges also clubbed petitions filed by the SRM Institute of Science and Technology and the Vellore Institute of Technology, challenging a government order issued on July 28.
Advocate General Vijay Narayan defended the G.O. stating that it had become necessary on the part of the State government to ensure the availability of requisite infrastructure, such as over 100 acres of farmland, and so on, since a greater number of educational institutions in the State had started offering agriculture and allied courses.
When private agriculture colleges affiliated to Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) in Coimbatore were complying with the norms laid down by the State, there was no reason why deemed universities should not, he said. Advocate Abdul Saleem, representing TNAU, said he would adopt the arguments of the A-G.
Stating that agricultural research and education falls under Entry 14 of List II (State list) of the Seventh schedule to the Constitution, the A-G said the State government was fully competent to require deemed universities to obtain NOCs. But Additional Solicitor General R. Sankaranarayanan, representing the UGC, differed with him.
Senior counsel G. Masilamani and Chitra Sampath, representing the petitioner institutions, said an interesting question of law with regard to the competence of the State government to insist on NOCs from deemed universities had been raised, and hence, they would require time to argue the matter at length.
