Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed a state-aided university that affiliates the private BEd colleges to reinstate the affiliation of institutions with valid documents within 10 days.
The division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya issued the order after the owners of some of the colleges whose affiliations were revoked by the university informed the court that even though they had submitted the required documents, the university was not reinstating their affiliations.
Baba Saheb Ambedkar Education University came up with a list of 96 BEd colleges in February whose affiliations it had revoked allegedly because they were not abiding by the National Council for Teachers’ Education (NCTE) regulations on teacher-student ratio and did not have the required infrastructure.
A BEd college must submit documents about the number of teachers, infrastructure (academic area, curriculum laboratory, science laboratory, resource centre and space for workshop), fire licence and other credentials to the university each year to renew their affiliation.
The NCTE regulations state that a BEd college should have at least eight teachers for a batch of 50 students.
A lawyer connected with the case said that after a person moved a petition before the court alleging that at least five BEd colleges in Hooghly district were collecting admission fees from aspirants despite not having the required infrastructure, the court asked the university to issue a list of colleges whose affiliations were intact and those whose affiliations had been revoked for public awareness.
Of these 96 colleges, 21 moved a petition alleging that although they had submitted all valid and required documents, the university was not reinstating their affiliations.
Srijib Chakrabarty, a lawyer representing Parama BEd College in Durgapur, said: “We have submitted all the valid documents and therefore our affiliation should be renewed.”
The two-year BEd programme is crucial because the state school service commission has mandated that candidates for secondary and higher secondary teaching jobs in government-aided schools must have a BEd degree to be eligible to sit for the selection test.
The Baba Saheb Ambedkar Education University in November had barred 253 such institutions from admitting students because they did not abide by the regulations.
The 96 colleges are part of that list, said a university official.
In December, the university issued a notification stating that the colleges could apply for affiliation afresh if they had done the needful according to the NCTE norms.
As many as 157 colleges had their affiliations restored but 96 colleges did not make the cut, a university official said.
“We have yet to go through the court order. The university will decide after studying the order,” said Soma Bandyopadhyay, the vice-chancellor of the university.
