The Madras High Court Bench here on Thursday stayed the operation of a communication sent by University Grants Commission ( UGC) in July this year directing Madurai Kamaraj University here to stop offering courses through distance education mode from the academic year 2016-17.
Justice V. Bharathidasan granted the interim stay on a writ petition filed by Registrar P. Vijayan who claimed that more than 1.2 lakh students pursuing various courses through the Directorate of Distance Education of the varsity would get affected if the entire mode of education was halted abruptly.
Earlier, the university counsel told the judge that Justice D. Hariparanthaman (since retired) had on December last stayed the operation of another communication issued by UGC on August 12, 2015 prohibiting universities from establishing off-campus/study/outreach centres outside the territorial jurisdiction of their respective State.
Then, MKU had contended that UGC had issued the notification on the basis of a 2005 Supreme Court judgment which had struck down a Chhattisgarh legislation for establishing self-financed private universities and did not in any deal with prescription of territorial jurisdiction for offering programmes through distance education.
However, the official communication issued by UGC Secretary Jaspal S. Sandhu stated that universities established through laws passed by State legislatures were not entitled to set up off-campus/study/outreach centres anywhere outside their home State since the apex court had ruled that only Parliament was empowered to enact laws for the entire country.
