SC relief for colleges without full-time principals

Updated on: Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The Supreme Court on Monday set aside the directives of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court of December 3, 2008, which had given a deadline to all colleges in the state to ensure that they appoint full-time principals. The high court had also provided for a ban on college admissions if they failed to appoint principals, and had directed state universities to disaffiliate colleges without principals.

The apex court order comes as a major relief to colleges, which struggled to meet the December 2010 deadline and were facing a ban on firstyear admissions for academic year 2011-12.

The SC order came during the hearing of a bunch of special leave petitions (SLPs) by the bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra. Various academic institutions from across Maharashtra had filed the SLPs challenging the HC judgment. In May 2009, the SC had stayed the HC directives for a year till May 2010. The stay was extended in ensuing orders and the last deadline was December 2010.

In November last year, the SC issued directives that all the SLPs relating to the matter and filed before various benches be clubbed and heard together, and the same was taken up on Monday.

When the state government last collated information on vacancies in July last year, it found that 1, 870 posts of principals were unfilled.

Close to 1, 700 vacancies were in permanently unaided colleges and 170 were in government-aided institutes. Officials in the state government said that glaring deficiencies were found in colleges affiliated to Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Amrawati and Marathwada universities.

The institutions had contended through their SLPs that the high court had not given a hearing to the college managements before passing judgment in a suo motu public interest litigation. They also contended that finding candidates for the post of principal as per the qualifications laid down by the University Grants Commission (UGC) was proving to be a difficult task as there were not many candidates with a PhD, especially in professional and technical areas such as engineering, architecture and law. Colleges in rural and semi-urban areas were encountering difficulties such as reluctance of candidates to take up posting there.

The Supreme Court bench, while ruling out action like a ban on first-year admissions and disaffiliation, said on Monday that the process for the appointment of principals should go on as usual.

The University of Pune (UoP) had already taken a position that it won’t grant eligibility to admissions effected for academic year 2011-12 by those colleges which have neither appointed full-time principals nor have obtained any relief like a stay order on the HC directives.

The UoP had taken a similar stance for the last academic year too, saying it could not risk contempt of court.

Gajanan Ekbote, chairman of Progressive Education Society, which runs a chain of institutions and was one of the petitioners in the SC, said, “colleges no more have to worry about ban on admission or disaffiliation. All they have to do is to continue with their efforts to find qualified candidates as principals.”

According to the list posted by the UoP on its website on October 11, 2010, there are 88 colleges and 43 institutions in the university area of Pune, Nashik and Ahmednagar districts, which have continued to operate without full-time heads.

SC relief for colleges without full-time principals

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