New Delhi: The SC on Friday restrained the deemed universities imparting BE/B.Tech through distance education from the academic year 2018-19 and suspended the degrees of those who had obtained them from 2001.
A bench of justices A.K. Goel and Uday Lalit gave this ruling while setting aside a judgment of the Orissa high court, which approved these degrees obtained through distance education.
The bench agreed with the findings of the Punjab and Haryana high court, which rejected the same. The bench held that the 1994 UGC regulations barring imparting technical education courses through distance education would apply to deemed universities and they were not justified in introducing any new courses in Technical Education without the approval of AICTE.
The bench set aside the ex-post approvals granted by the UGC as far as candidates enrolled from the academic sessions 2001 are concerned.
The Bench noted that there is no embargo on such Deemed to be University in entering new areas of education or introducing new courses but in that case, it can’t demand or receive complete relaxation from regulatory regime. It must satisfy all those requirements, which a normal institution is required to.
It said “We restrain all Deemed to be Universities to carry on any courses in distance education mode from the Academic Session 2018- 2019 onwards and until it is permissible to conduct such courses in distance education mode and specific permissions are granted by the concerned statutory/regulatory authorities in respect of each of those courses and unless the off-campus Centres/Study Centres are individually inspected and found adequate by the concerned Statutory Authorities. The approvals have to be course specific.”
