Date:09/09/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/09/09/stories/2004090908750100.htm

Tamil Nadu

Unaided colleges need not follow single-window system

By A. Subramani

CHENNAI, SEPT. 8. The Madras High Court today dispensed with the single-window system (SWS) of counselling and admission for management quota seats in unaided engineering colleges, saying the SWS affected the managements' right to admit students.

Justice Prabha Sridevan, to whom the writ appeals relating to the applicability of the SWS were referred to, said "The SWS deprives the institution of choosing its students, which right has been declared by the Supreme Court in the T.M.A. Pai case and clarified in the Islamic Academy's case... The fact remains that the Supreme Court, at no point, mentions centralised counselling. In fact, the judgments keep reiterating that the institutions have their discretion to select the students of their choice."

She said, "the freedom of the institutions to select their students is curtailed only to the extent that selection shall be on the basis of merit. It is channelised or regulated by allowing the colleges which do not want to submit to the common entrance test conducted by the State agency, to have a common test of their own. It is only to this extent that their right to select students has been curtailed or channelised and not further."

Right to refuse

The judge described as "untenable" an argument that if the SWS was not followed, the students would be deprived of exercising their choice, and said, "students do exercise their choice by applying to the college which they prefer." Citing that 8,000 seats remained unoccupied even after they were allotted during Anna University's counselling, she said, "but, the college does not have the right to refuse a student once he is allotted to them, in which case the right of the management to admission is definitely affected."

Jurisdiction

As for the Permanent Committee's role, the judge said, "there is nothing in the Supreme Court order to show that after the test is conducted, anything further is to be done by the Committee with regard to admissions." Its role was confined to receiving the merit list, the list of selected candidates and ensuring that the merit list was not overlooked.

She then directed the Consortium of Professional Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu to complete the admission process within three weeks, taking into consideration their submission that within five days they would receive the Plus-Two marks of students, within 10 days thereafter the merit list would be published and within a week thereafter the counselling by individual colleges would be concluded. She said, "the merit list shall be published online so that there is no delay in the students knowing where they stand in the list."