No coercive steps to im'pent rigors of NCTE amended provisions

The Madras High Court was today told by National Council for Teacher Education that no coercive steps would be taken to implement the rigors of certain amended provisions of NCTE regulations, following which all related petitions were closed.
Recording the submission made by NCTE counsel, the first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M M Sundresh, said it was of the view that since the challenge to the statutory regulations was not pressed and what was prayed for was a re-visiting of those provisions, it was treating the petitions as closed.
The matter relates to petitions filed by Tamil Nadu Self Financing College of Education Management Association and other individual colleges, challenging certain amended provisions by NCTE to declare and certain clauses of Regulations-2014 of NCTE as null and void, unenforceable, invalid, arbitrary and unjust, besides unconstitutional.

The Association submitted there are 670 Teacher Education Institutions (Colleges) offering B.Ed and M.Ed courses in Tamil Nadu. As per the new rules,B.Ed and M.Ed courses offered as one year course has each been enhanced to two years each. Candidates must then qualify for Teacher Eligibility Test.
NCTE further said all amended regulations should be implemented within a duration of 21 days.
When a batch of petitions came up today, the Association submitted that the HRD ministry had appointed an expert committee to examine feedback of implementation of the rules. They had sittings all over the country, including Chennai, where representatives of the petitioner met the committee.

Since the committee itself was examining the matter, some 'troublesome provisions' may not be given effect till the exercise is completed, the Association said.

The Association submitted that an exercise to re-visit these provisions and solve the problems of the petitions is indispensible and prayed that till such time, implementation may be ordered to be kept in abeyance.
The petitioners also challenged another amended provision of NCTE, reducing intake of candidates from 100 to 50 per unit (class) and increasing the corpus funds to Rs five and seven lakh per unit for an intake capacity of 50 candidates.
NCTE submitted that sufficient time would be granted to do the needful.

The bench directed the respondents to carry out the exercise as early as feasible.
"Counsel for the respondents state that no coercive steps would be taken to implement the rigors of the aforesaid provisions till a final decision is taken. This statement is taken on record. All the writ petitions are thus closed in the aforesaid terms," the bench said.