The three universities — JRN Rajasthan Vidhyapeeth University, Udaipur; Vinayaka Mission Research Foundation, Salem, Tamil Nadu; IASE Deemed University, Rajasthan — have been conducting distance education programmes without taking prior approval from any of the authorities, including the UGC or the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Supreme Court on Friday cancelled all engineering degrees awarded by these universities since 2001 and ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the roles of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and other authorities for giving approval to these courses.

For this purpose, the Court has directed the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) to conduct appropriate written and practical tests for the concerned students. The entire expenditure for conducting the tests has been directed to be recovered from the concerned Universities.

The students would get only two chances to pass the exam, failing which their degrees will stand recalled and cancelled. Further, in case the students do not wish to appear in such tests, the Court directed refund of the money deposited by them towards tuition and other charges. The students have been given time till 15 January to exercise the option to take the tests.

The verdict comes on a bunch of petition wherein questions regarding the validity of degrees in engineering awarded by the concerned deemed-to-be universities were under scrutiny.

The court also directed the UGC to look into the deemed-to-be university status enjoyed by the concerned institutions and conduct an inquiry in that behalf.

Lamenting the state of affairs in such universities, the bench also restrained “all deemed-to-be universities to carry on any courses in distance education mode from the academic session 2018-2019 onwards unless and until it is permissible to conduct such courses in distance education mode and specific permissions are granted by the concerned statutory/regulatory authorities in respect of each of those courses and unless the off-campus centres/study centres are individually inspected and found adequate by the concerned statutory authorities”.