Under the conditions for affiliation, a university can certainly impose conditions which are required to have academic excellence in the matter of running private affiliated colleges, the Madras High Court has said.
It is not clear how those conditions could affect the rights of the managements to run the institutions, the court said, while dismissing writ petitions by the Association of Self-Financing Arts, Science and Management Colleges of Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore, which challenged circulars of the Bharathiar University, Coimbatore in 2007.
In February and September 2007, the university directed the affiliated colleges to have college committees and the procedure by which the committees should conduct the proceedings and constitution of the college council. It prescribed the norms for appointing the teaching staff.
The university had directed the colleges to fulfil certain norms for their affiliation. A condition related to managements paying UGC scales of pay for teachers and other staff engaged by them.
In the counter, the university cited a Supreme Court ruling which said the universities granting affiliation could lay down standards and conditions of affiliation.
Justice K.Chandru said some of the conditions found in the circular were in the Tamil Nadu Private Colleges (Regulation) Act. But that in no way affected the private colleges' rights because what had been set out in the conditions of affiliation such as forming a college committee and appointment of staff were found in the law. Therefore, the colleges could not take exception to the university reminding them about their obligations under the law.
The colleges in order to prepare the students for obtaining their degree from the university, which was recognised by the UGC, were bound to comply with the conditions of recognition of the UGC. Further, payment of salary to teachers on a par with UGC pay scales was a condition imposed by the UGC.
