HC vacates interim order on surrender of seats

In a major reprieve to deemed university colleges, COMED-K colleges and the Karnataka Religious and Linguistic Minority Colleges Association (KRLMCA), the vacation bench of the Karnataka High Court on Thursday vacated the interim order directing them to surrender the seats as per their agreement/undertaking with the government.

A division bench comprising Justice N K Patil and Justice Ravi Malimath ordered vacating of the interim order dated April 16, 2014.

The interim order had directed these colleges not to admit students against the reserved government seats.

As per the consensual agreement with these colleges, COMED-K had to surrender 33 per cent, deemed university 25 per cent and KRLMCA had to surrender 20 per cent of the their total seats to the government.

The counsels representing the colleges stated that they were not in a position to admit the students for the reason that they had given an undertaking at the time of issuing Essentiality Certificate in respect of new courses they had introduced, resulting in an increase in the intake.

The counsels have said that they had never given any undertaking to surrender a certain percentage of the entire intake of the college.

Therefore, they submitted that they would surrender a certain percentage of the intake in respect of new faculties/subjects introduced for the present academic year 2014-15.

The government counsel submitted to the court that they didn’t have earlier records except the undertaking given by Manipal University in June 2010 as on today.

The government counsel said that his submissions were made as per the instructions given by the Deputy Secretary, Health and Family Welfare (Medical Education) who was present before the court.

The counsel further said he was making sincere efforts to get the entire records and would produce the same at the time of final hearing of the case.

The bench, vacating the interim order, said the results shall be subject to the result of the writ petitions.