Lakshmangarh, Sikar: A scathing report slamming the state of affairs in deemed universities and its recommendation to de-recognise 44 of them will not be implemented without giving them a fair opportunity to counter the charges, the Centre informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday. This response came from solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam to a query raised by a Bench comprising Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma, which was hearing a bunch of petitions by blacklisted deemed universities.
The deemed universities, through senior advocate K K Venugopal, argued that the institutions were inspected by University Grants Commission (UGC) and were allowed to continue, and the HRD ministry had no authority to constitute the Tandon committee and accept its recommendations which were contrary to that given by the regulatory body.
Subramaniam tried to narrow down the controversy by agreeing with the Bench that if the government was to take action recommended by the Tandon committee, then it was duty bound to justify it on the basis of material which clearly suggested that the deemed university no longer functioned as expected under the statute and that there had to be compliance of natural justice -- opportunity to the institutions to present their defence.
However, when the Bench asked whether the "government was empowered to appoint the Tandon committee", the SG said if the Centre had the power to notify an institution as deemed university, then as a logical corollary, it had the power to rescind the notification.
Picking the SG's argument on meeting the principles of natural justice, Venugopal said the expert committee gave just 2-3 minutes to each university seeking irrelevant details that had nothing to do with the issue of recognition or its deemed status.
"What was shocking was the clash of interest as Tandon was part of an institute in Manesar (Haryana) that was ranked high among universities found fit to be included in the deemed category," Venugopal said.
He added that though Tandon had claimed that he was not present in the room when the case of the institute (National Brain Research Centre) was taken up, it could not be accepted unless there was video proof of his claim.
