Unjust to stop online courses when students already enrolled: Calcutta High Court to NUJS

Students already enrolled in online courses should be allowed to complete them even if such courses have been de-recognised by the University Grants Commission (UGC), the Calcutta High Court directed the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) on Monday [Abhisek Panda v WBNUJS]..A bench of Justices Subhendu Samanta and IP Mukerji was hearing a plea against a decision of university’s executive committee to stop certain online courses as they were not approved by the UGC. The Court ordered that the students already enrolled be allowed to complete them.“In our opinion, at this point of time it would be most inequitable and unjust to de-recognise the course cancel it and direct refund of fees,” the bench said..The courses were started in 2012 by NUJS, and numerous students had enrolled for the same. They ran smoothly until 2018 when they were discontinued due to lack of express approval by the UGC..However, the High Court opined that since NUJS was a premier institute, qualifications granted by them were of high value. Therefore, no student would ordinarily go behind an announcement to try and verify whether UGC had approved it.“The students were most likely to presume that such approval had been obtained from the University Grants Commission,” the Court said.In this regard, the bench highlighted that the students enrolled had not only spent money, but also extended their time and energy in pursuing the courses..Further, it was recorded that the doctrine of promissory estoppel prevented NUJS from calling off the courses and the UGC from de-recognising them.“We direct that the students who have already enrolled themselves for the online courses from 2012 and not completed it should be allowed to complete the courses if otherwise entitled to do so,” the Court ruled..It was, nonetheless, clarified that no new enrolment ought to be permitted without the UGC’s express authorisation..Senior advocate Abhratosh Majumdar, advocates Suman Sengupta, D Basu Mallick, Diptendu Banerjee and Dip Jyoti Chakraborty appeared for the appellants.NUJS was represented by senior advocate Pratik Dhar with advocates Ritwik Pattanayak and Pappu Adhikari.Advocate Anil Kumar Gupta appeared for the UGC.The other respondents were represented advocates Arkaprava Sen, Sanghita Mukherjee and Tapas Maity..[Read Order]