Professional education freedom verdict sparks constitutional crisis as a commonsense judgement of the Supreme Court has ruled that the Central and state governments have no right to appropriate admission quotas at arbitrary tuition fees in private professional colleges it hasn’t funded or financed, arousing the indignation of the nation’s powerful political class. Dilip Thakore reports A unanimous judgement of a heavyweight seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India freeing privately promo-ted, financially independent professional education (medicine, engineering, business management, pharmacy, nursing etc) colleges from the pernicious licence-permit-quota regime which surreptitiously migrated into education following the liberalisation and deregulation of Indian industry in 1991, has outraged political parties across the board and set Parliament on a collision course with the nation’s independent judiciary. The historic import of the apex court’s judgement which has halted incremental Central and state government interference and micro-management of institutions of professional higher education resulting in plunging standards and severe capacity shortages, was reflected in newspaper headlines on August 13 following the verdict in P.A Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra (Appeal (Civil) 5041 of 2005) the previous day. States Can’t have Quotas or Say in Private Institutions screamed a 40 point front page lead headline in The Times of India. SC Gives a Free hand to Pvt Colleges trumpeted the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald and SC Scraps Quota in Unaided Pvt Colleges headlined The Economic Times. The sensationalism, perhaps euphoria, of these among the more sedate of the mainstream dailies, is understandable. Because following more than two decades of litigation, the Supreme Court’s unanimous judgement in Inamdar’s Case has upheld and reaffirmed a previous 11-judge bench judgement of the apex court in TMA Pai Foundation & Ors vs. State of Karnataka & Ors (2002 8 SCC 481) which had struck down the prevalent practice of state governments appropriating more than 60-85 percent of capacity in privately promoted, unaided (i.e financially independent) 327 medical and 1,346 engineering colleges across the country for students topping the CETs (Common Entrance Tests) conducted by state governments. Under a 1993 judgement of the Supreme Court in Unnikrishnan’s Case (overruled by the TMA Pai judgement), the managements of private unaided colleges were legally obliged to provide heavily subsidised professional education to students qualifying under the CETs. “We find great force in the submission made on behalf of the petitioners that the states have no power to insist on seat-sharing in unaided professional education institutions by fixing a quota of seats between the management and the State. The State cannot insist on private educational institutions which receive no aid from the state to implement the State’s policy of reservation for granting admission on lesser percentage of marks, i.e on any criterion except merit… As per our understanding neither in the judgement of the Pai Foundation Case nor of the constitution bench in the Kerala Education Bill which was approved by Pai Foundation, there is anything which would allow the state to regulate or control admissions in unaided professional education institutions so as to compel them to give up a share of the available seats to candidates chosen by the State… This would amount to nationalisation of…
