Journalism of Courage
THE Bombay High Court has rapped the Mumbai University (MU) for imposing a penalty of over Rs 5 lakh on an educational institute for submitting applications for issuance of eligibility certificates after the prescribed date. Stating that the MU had no authority to impose the penalty, the HC said the action on its part to withhold the degree certificates of students is also illegal.
“What has disturbed us is the submission on behalf of the petitioner that the university in respect of some institutions has not imposed such fine and in fact has accepted applications for eligibility after the cut off date,” said a division bench of Justices V M Kanade and G S Kulkarni.
The court further said that the same was not denied in the affidavit filed by the university. “Such discriminatory actions are not expected from a public body like MU,” observed the bench.
Mulund-based R R Educational Trust’s College of Education and Research BEd College was asked to cough up Rs 5,40,000 after it failed to submit application for issuance of eligibility certificates on time.
The college had admitted 54 students for the year 2007-08 to its BEd course. The college said that eligibility applications were required to be submitted in MU on the basis of the migration certificates. The college further argued that these students did not receive their migration certificates from their respective universities on time.
However, when the students received the required documents, the college forwarded the same along with the list of students to MU for issuance of provisional eligibility certificates. The MU informed the college that it would accept the forms and a provisional eligibility certificate would be issued to students subject to an amount of Rs10,000. It further further clarified that Rs 10,000 was penalty imposed with respect to each student, and thus, the amount was Rs 5.4 lakh.
aamir.khan@expressindia.com
