Date:01/02/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/01/stories/2008020160551300.htm

National

Norms to streamline deemed varsities soon

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi: Regulations to streamline deemed universities including the criteria for conferment of the deemed university status will be in place shortly, the Centre has informed the Supreme Court.

Additional Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam gave this information on Monday before a Bench consisting of Justices Ashok Bhan and Dalveer Bhandari, hearing a petition filed by advocate Viplav Sharma.

The ASG was responding to concerns expressed by the court over allegations of large-scale corruption in grant of the deemed university status to institutions which did not have even basic infrastructure. It referred to one instance of 36 private colleges being granted the status in one go.

Mr. Subramaniam said draft guidelines were ready and final regulations would be available in two weeks. Once these were put in place, private institutions would be subjected to strict scrutiny before grant of the status. Foreign universities interested in setting up base in India would also be brought under the purview of the regulations.

In view of this submission, the Bench, in its order, said: “Adjourned by six weeks. In the meantime, counsel for the petitioner may offer his suggestions to the respondents as, according to the respondents, the regulations are being processed and are in the final stage.”

The petitioner said the ‘Deemed to be University status’ was being sought by all sorts of institutions having 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.

There were about 100 deemed universities now. Earlier the status was granted to a few specific institutions for certain faculties, which proved their academic excellence.

But in the last few years a number of professional colleges had obtained the status and were misusing it, the petitioner said. He sought a direction to the respondents to confer it only on institutions which produced high quality research papers and professionals of global acceptability.