Chennai: Slamming the central government for coming up with the proposed draft Higher Education Commission of India Act 2018, Justice A.K. Rajan, former Judge, Madras High Court said, “The central government has no power either to establish or regulate or winding up the universities according to the Constitution.”
He released the book titled “Education – Not a commodity for Market”, a compilation of responses to MHRD’s draft act on Monday here. After releasing the book, he said, “If the proposed HECI act comes into existence all the universities and states will be powerless as it will govern the entire higher education.”
Quoting the constitution he said, “The powers to establish the universities and regulating them and winding them up is exclusively given to the state legislatures under Entry 32 List 2 (state list). The Parliament is specifically excluded not to interfere with these aspects.”
The union government has no power to establish a university and regulate any university or to wind up any university under entry 44 list 1 (union list, he added.
He further cited that universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University were established by bringing an amendment to the constitution as the union government does not have the power to establish the universities.
“The confusing aspect is the entry 25 list 3 (concurrent list) which states that both central and states have powers in education, including technical education, medical education and universities. While reading with the other two entries, the interpretation could be university education. It is not establishing, regulating and winding up universities which were particularly denied to the central government and conferred with the state governments,” he explained.
Citing the modern dental college case, he said, “The Supreme Court has erred in its judgement where it said that the Parliament has also had powers to govern the universities. The judgment has no mention of entry 44 of list 1 where the constitution has excluded the Parliament. Nobody has filed a review petition against this judgment.”
“In my view, the Supreme Court has failed in its duty to protect the constitution as regards to this judgment. When the central government was specifically denied certain powers and how can it claim to have those powers?” he wondered. Justice D.Hariparanthaman, State Platform for Common School System general secretary P.B.Prince Gajendrababu and others spoke at the function.
