SC declines PIL on Delhi University's four-year course

The Supreme Court Tuesday declined to entertain a public interest plea seeking quashing of the UGC's directive to Delhi University to dump the four-year under-graduate programme.

An apex court bench of Justice Vikramajit Sen and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh asked the petitioner, former Delhi University Teachers Association president Aditya Narayan Mishra, to approach the Delhi High Court with his plea.

As counsel Ankur Mittal urged the court to hear the matter as it involved urgency, the court reiterated that the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petitioner should approach the Delhi High Court.

Justice Sen said: "In case you approach the Supreme Court at a later stage, then we will have the benefit of the reasoning of the high court."

Mishra sought that the three orders of the University Grants Commission (UGC) dated June 20, 21 and 22 to Delhi University be quashed.

The UGC's orders asked Delhi University to scrap the controversial four-year under-graduate course started in the last academic year.

Even as the UGC, a statutory body of the government to coordinate and maintain the standards of university education in India, ordered DU to scrap the FYUP "without fail" by Monday, a day before the admission process to the varsity was to begin, the university has been tight-lipped over the issue.

With no clarity and consensus on the issue, the university also deferred the admission process which was slated to begin Tuesday, leaving in lurch tens and thousands of students.