Coming down heavily on illegal and fraudulent admissions made under NRI quota in violation of norms, the Madras high court has slapped a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on 18 private engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu.
Disposing of a batch of 43 writ petitions filed by students and parents challenging the government guidelines on admissions issued on June 2, 2009, Justice K. Chandru of the Madurai bench of the court observed that the quota had been filled even before the guidelines were issued.
The costs have been imposed to deter the colleges from misusing NRI quota, the Judge said on Monday. He also directed the director of Technical Education and All India Council for Technical Education to initiate appropriate action against the colleges if they violated the norms for admission under NRI quota in future.
As the students had already completed three semesters, nothing could be achieved by setting aside the admissions, the judge said.
"However, if any aggrieved student who did not get any admission in these colleges by virtue of illegal admissions had come before the court, this court would have had no hesitation to set aside selection of the petitioners so that meritorious candidates can be admitted.
But there is no such case filed by any aggrieved individual", the judge said. "In the normal course, the students before the court were not eligible to get admissions either on merit or under management quota. The motive of private colleges was making aggrandisement of their wealth by collecting huge amounts from the NRI students", he said.
"Normally costs are imposed on the losing petitioners. But in this case the petitioners are only Trojan horses, the costs should be levied against self-financing colleges which have indulged in illegal acts and have also set up the students to approach this court", Justice Chandru said.