Madras High Court on Tuesday warned of granting an interim stay to the decision of Anna University cancelling two courses if authorities fail to provide a proper written explanation to the court by tomorrow (Wednesday). The court also issued notices to the state and University to respond to the plea moved by the student.
The issue pertains to a student of Anna University filing a petition at the Madras high court challenging the decision of the premier University to scrap M Tech Biotechnology and M Tech Computational Biology programmes for the academic year 2020-21.
The University owing to differences in central government's insistence that the university to follow only 49.5% reservation and not the state's 69% quota policy in admission resulted in the varsity to scrap the courses. On Tuesday when the plea came for hearing before Justice B Pugalendhi, advocate Saravanan Annadurai for the petitioner submitted that the 43 students who have enrolled for the courses are now in jeopardy. He further stressed that an interim stay be granted to the varsity's decision.
However, the counsel for Anna University said that he is yet to receive the petitioner's papers to seek written instructions on the issue from the University. The court hearing the submissions made by the counsels said that a detailed reply is sought in the issue on why the University went ahead with the cancellation and whether any new courses are rolled to address the problem of the students left in the lurch.
The court also said that if the written instructions fail to satisfy the court then it will permit the petitioners interim plea of granting a stay challenging the cancellation. According to the petitioner, R Chitra, the students who have prepared hard for the course and taken the GAT-B examination are left with an empty future to grapple with. It will not be out of place to point out that after the advent of the Covid-19 the demand for these courses had gone up, the petitioner added.
