No recognition for institutes: SC

The Supreme Court refused to entertain a bunch of petitions filed by Maharashtra-based teacher-training institutes seeking direction to the government to grant them recognition.

The Supreme Court refused to entertain a bunch of petitions filed by Maharashtra-based teacher-training institutes seeking direction to the government to grant them recognition. Instead, it took the “undeserving” institutes to task for making false statements and imposed a fine on them.

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A bench of Justice GS Singhvi and Justice KS RAdhakrishnan held that the institutes had not approached the court “with clean hands and succeeded in polluting the stream of justice by making patently false statements” on their status. If such “undeserving institutes” were granted recognition, it would be detrimental to national interest, the court added.

The institutes had challenged the Bombay high court order that upheld the decision of the National Council for Teacher Education’s Western Regional Committee not to grant recognition to them in the backdrop of recommendations by the Maharashtra government that there was no requirement of trained teachers in the state.

However, the institutes had claimed in the apex court that they were recognised institutions and that the Bombay High Court had erroneously quashed the recognition of 290 other institutions.

The apex court further said that students qualifying as teachers from such unrecognised institutes would fail to impart value-based education. “Rather, they may train young minds as to how one can succeed in life by manipulations,” the court said.

The Supreme Court rejected the institutes’ plea that the careers of several students they had trained would be at jeopardy if they were not granted recognition.

“There is no valid ground to confer legitimacy upon the admission made by the appellants in a clandestine manner. Any such order by the court will be detrimental to the national interest,” the bench observed.

The institutes had sought recognition in 2006 and 2007 for starting the teacher-training programme (D.Ed).

The apex court held that the institutes did not have the right to admit students without recognition. The admissions, it added, was to make business and earn profit in the name of education.