Education In The State Has Been Taken As A Business Or An Industry To Sell The Degrees: Allahabad High Court

The Bench of Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal made this observation while showing its displeasure over the move of appellants/petitioners' institution to fill 25 seats in B.Ed. course directly despite the fact that 25 candidates belonging to the SC and ST were recommended for admission through the centralized counselling.

The matter before the Court

By way of an appeal, a challenge was made to the judgment dated 08^th December 2020 whereby the writ petition preferred by the appellants/petitioners (Education Institutions) was dismissed.

The appellants/petitioners submitted that without giving them an opportunity of hearing, the writ petition was decided largely considering the argument made by the non-appellants/respondents.

Thus, it was argued before the Court that the impugned judgment passed by the learned Single Judge should be set aside on the aforesaid ground itself.

The facts of the Case

The name of twenty-five scheduled castes and scheduled tribes candidates/students were recommended in the centralized counseling for admission in B.Ed. course.

However, none of those candidates/students were given admission rather appellants/petitioners' institution filled the vacant seats directly. The Institutions argued that when non was inclined to take admission, the appellants/petitioners' institution filled the vacant seats as per the Rules.

It was argued that the rule permits direct admission in a situation when the candidates fail to take admission and accordingly, there was no illegality in the action of the institution to give direct admission to other set of twenty five candidates/students.

To justify their action, a plea was taken that the candidates named for the admission in the centralized counseling were not inclined to take admission and for that a copy of the affidavit of few candidates was enclosed.

Court's Observations

The Court perused the affidavits (allegedly filed by few of the 25 SC/ST Students) and found them to be in cyclostyled manner.

Importantly, the Court observed,

"It can happen only when the affidavit has been prepared by someone interested in creating it. In this case the appellants/petitioners' institution itself was interested to create it otherwise an individual would give affidavit in his own language and cannot be word to word same to affidavit of others."

The Court further noted,

"The affidavits were obtained by appellants/petitioners' institution containing the same language which cannot happen if it is to be given by different candidates on different dates. The affidavits having the same language were created at the instance of the appellants/petitioners' institution and seems to have been given to get refund of the amount paid online."

The Court also underlined that out of twenty-five candidates/students recommended for admission, it cannot be that none would take admission.

"It would be an extraordinary situation when none of the candidates recommended by the centralized counseling for admission would refuse to take admission whereas everybody is in dire need to pursue B.Ed. course for getting appointment on the post of Teacher," observed the Court.

Considering the facts in totality, the Court did not find any illegality in the judgment of the Single Judge as it was not an ex-parte order rather discussed the issue raised by the appellants/petitioners on their appearance in the writ petition.

Thus, the appeal challenging the impugned judgment dated 08.12.2020 failed and stood dismissed.

Lastly, the Court said that it was inclined to send the matter to the National Council for Teacher Education (N.C.T.E.) for appropriate action (including the de-recognition of the institution looking to their conduct), but for the reason that N.C.T.E. is not a party to this appeal as well as to the petition, the Court refrained to take suo-moto cognizance, but warned the institution not to indulge in the practice of nature referred in the order.

The non-appellant University was however given liberty to proceed against the appellants/petitioners' institution if they indulge in the similar practice in future also and have communicated with the N.C.T.E. for appropriate action.

Case title - Sai College Of Education And Another v. State Of U.P. And 3 Others [Special Appeal Defective No. - 39 of 2021]

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