Policy is not to sanction self-financing courses in aided colleges, Kerala tells Supreme Court
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The Kerala government has informed the Supreme Court of its policy to not sanction self-financing courses in aided colleges.
The statement was made by the State government before a Bench of Justices U.U. Lalit and Ajay Rastogi in a petition filed by the Kerala Arts and Science Unaided College Management Association, represented by advocate Haris Beeran.
The Association had appealed against a Kerala High Court decision in 2014 to dismiss their plea challenging the action on the part of the State to permit aided colleges to run self-financing undergraduate and post-graduate degree courses in the same building or utilising the infrastructure meant for aided courses.
“Bachelor of Vocational Courses have been sanctioned as self-financing courses in aided colleges as per UGC guidelines but the government policy is that no self-financing courses will be sanctioned in aided colleges,” the court recorded the statement made by Kerala State counsel, advocate G. Prakash, in its order recently.
Mr. Beeran agreed to withdraw the case on the basis of the government’s statement in court.
The Association, in its petition, argued that sharing of premises would do away with the “level playing field” between aided and unaided colleges.
“Aided colleges are provided massive amounts of aid from authorities like the University Grants Commission as well as State governments while unaided institutions have to collect the capital themselves. Allowing aided institutions to then offer self-financing courses using the same premises and infrastructure paid for by the aid received thereby is on the face of it patently unfair,” it contended.
The appeal argued that the High Court had ignored the statutory rules against running self-financing courses using the infrastructural facilities meant for aided courses.
“The result of the process of granting affiliation to aided colleges to run self-financing courses out of the same premises would be that facilities granted to aided colleges like libraries, labs, etc, would be made use of by the institution for self-financing courses as well. This does violence to the intention behind distinguishing aided and unaided colleges and runs counter to the legislative scheme,” the petition had argued.
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