KERALA ARTS & SCIENCE UNAIDED COLLEGE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, REPRESENTED BY ITS SECRETARY Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Can an unaided or self-financing course be started in an aided college Can the University grant affiliation to such an unaided or self-financing course These questions have been baffling the managements and students for long. The Writ Petitions have been filed seeking to prohibit the aided colleges affiliated to the various Universities in the State from conducting unaided or self-financing under graduate or post graduate courses. There is also a prayer to restrain the Government and Universities from granting approval and affiliation to start self-financing courses anew in aided colleges and to delink such courses hitherto conducted. The grievance projected in the Writ Petitions is that the interest of the students undergoing the aided courses would be in peril if the infrastructural and the instructional facilities are shared by students undergoing unaided or self-financing courses. The writ petitioners are the management of two unaided colleges and its association apart from one student of an aided college and the respondents are the Government Universities and a few Colleges.

(2.) The grant of affiliation to a college or a course by an University is governed by the University Acts like the Kerala University Act, 1974, the Calicut University Act, 1975, the Mahatma Gandhi University Act, 1985 etc. There are also Statutes and Regulations in addition which detail the procedures for obtaining affiliation to the various colleges and courses and the pre-requisites for the grant of same. No statutory prohibition or inhibition in any of the University Acts or Statutes has been brought to my notice as regards the grant of affiliation to a self-financing course in an aided college. Such self-financing courses are being conducted in the aided colleges of the State for the past over a decade and still the students often do not get admission in the desired course or discipline. Independent provisions in the University Acts and Statutes as regards aided and unaided colleges are not decisive to hold that there cannot be an unaided course in an aided college.

(3.) The petitioners place heavy reliance on the following observation of the Division Bench of this Court in Calicut University v: Chirst College, Irinjalakuda (W.A. No. 2096/2009):