WALCHAND COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Vs. SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Rule. Respondents waive service. By consent of the parties, taken up for hearing forthwith.

(2.) There is no dispute about the fact that petitioner 1 is a well known and reputed College of Engineering, having different faculties like civil, mechanical, electrical, electronics, computer science and information technology. The petitioners are primarily aggrieved by the action of respondent 1 in refusing to recognize petitioner 1 as an autonomous college though, according to the petitioners, by letter dated 12/7/2006, respondent 1 had communicated to the petitioners that it had granted autonomy to the petitioners. It is necessary to give gist of the facts as stated by the petitioners to understand their grievance.

(3.) Petitioner 1 was established in 1947. It was affiliated to the Shivaji University. In 1994, the Maharashtra University Act, 1994 (for short, the University, Act") was enacted and the Shivaji University Act, 1974 was repealed. Affiliation of petitioner 1- college, however, continued. On 19/7/2002, the Government of India decided to implement Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (for short, "the TEQIP"). This programme is to be implemented with the help of soft loan of Rs.5,000 crores from the World Bank. This programme aims at making India a developed and confident nation by producing world class engineers through qualitative changes in technical education system. The Ministry of Human Resources Development (for short, "the MHRD") is to select engineering colleges and polytechnics for this purpose. The MHRD has decided certain criteria and the Institutes fulfilling those criteria will get substantial financial support. At the end of this programme, the engineering colleges are expected to be on par with the Indian Institute of Technology. One of the important conditions for participation in this programme is that the Institute should be totally autonomous.