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Vinit Garg & Ors. v. University Grants Commission & Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2019 INSC 979Decided 29 Aug 2019
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1510 of 2018
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Justice Sanjiv Khanna

Background

92 petitioners who held diploma qualifications and were working with the Government of Punjab had enrolled in a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) programme offered in open and distance learning mode by the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (TIET), Patiala. The University Grants Commission (UGC) refused to recognise these degrees as valid, on the ground that the distance-mode B.Tech. courses had been run without the approval of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), even though TIET had received provisional recognition from the Distance Education Council (DEC). The petitioners approached the Supreme Court directly under Article 32 asking the Court to direct UGC to treat their degrees as valid and equivalent to regular degrees.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that DEC alone was never competent to authorise technical (engineering) courses in distance mode: such courses required the separate approval of AICTE and, where applicable, UGC, under their respective governing Acts. Relying on an earlier central government notification and prior Supreme Court precedent, the Court found that permissions for technical education through open/distance learning could only validly come from AICTE/UGC, and DEC's grant of recognition to TIET for the B.Tech. distance programme did not substitute for this requirement. Since the TIET distance B.Tech. programme lacked the mandatory AICTE approval, the Court found no merit in the writ petition and dismissed it, with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

A degree obtained through distance/open learning in a technical discipline is only valid if the specific statutory regulator for that field (AICTE for technical education, alongside UGC) has approved the programme: approval from a general distance-education body alone is not sufficient, so prospective students should verify a programme's AICTE/UGC approval status before enrolling.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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