Court pulls up Anna University for filling seats, ignoring condition

September 28, 2012 02:31 am | Updated November 17, 2021 12:32 am IST - CHENNAI:

The Madras High Court has pulled up the Anna University for filling up 20 seats out of 80 seats in the School of Architecture and Planning other than through single-window counselling.

The condition imposed in an order of July 13 this year permitting the university to fill up 80 seats appeared to have been thrown to the winds and the concession shown to the university had been totally abused, prima facie, observed Justice V. Ramasubramanian.

In an order on a sub-application in a contempt petition, he issued an interim direction to the university not to fill up the 20 seats, as indicated in a communication dated September 18 of the Secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA.) No candidate should be admitted other than through the single window counselling. If any candidate had already been admitted, no further steps should be taken until further orders of the court for continuing the admission process. The Judge ordered that notice be served on the university’s counsel.

Originally, based on an inspection by an expert committee of the Council of Architecture, the council’s executive committee passed a resolution on April 19 reducing the permitted intake to the Bachelor’s degree course in architecture in the university’s School of Architecture and Planning.

Challenging the resolution, Anna University filed a writ petition. On July 13, Mr. Justice Ramasubramanian permitted the university to fill up 80 seats for the academic session 2012-13 subject to certain terms and conditions. The Judge said he had imposed the conditions following serious allegations by the Council of Architecture that the university had been filling up seats in excess of the permitted intake in the past. Many seats had been sold for a price. “But unfortunately, Anna University, which was the beneficiary of the interim order passed by me, does not appear to have taken care to comply with the conditions imposed.” Meanwhile, a contempt petition was filed by Y. Vandana, an SC candidate, that if the university had filled up the permitted intake of 80 seats as per the policy, she would have been selected. During the hearing, the university’s standing counsel produced a letter by the Secretary, TNEA, to the Government Advocate which said that out of the 80 seats, the university had filled up 20 seats, other than through single window counselling.

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