GO banning private law colleges quashed

This was due to Wednesday’s High Court’s landmark judgment that quashed the Tamil Nadu Establishment of Private Law Colleges (Prohibition) Act, 2014, which had prohibited the setting up of private law colleges in Tamil Nadu, as ultra vires of the Constitution of India.

First bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, in its verdict held that, “We fail to see as to how such a legislation can be saved by any endeavour to read into what is clearly not within it, that is, neither a restriction or regulation, but an absolute ban and that too for unlimited time. Judiciary has to thus step in to protect the constitutional safeguards.” 

The bench also, on holding that Education must go on but from and to the right people and of quality, said, “If we turn to the test of proportionality, the only answer would be that such a blanket prohibition, in fact, does not even sub serve the object for which the legislation was enacted and cannot be construed as a reasonable restriction. This is not a case where the majoritarian concept of will of the people would apply, as it infringes the valuable rights conferred under Part-III (fundamental rights) of the Constitution of India, which is the ground norm.” 

The order had come about on PILs filed by Vanniar Educational Trust and Forum for Social Justice, seeking to declare the Tamil Nadu Establishment of Private Law Colleges (Prohibition) Act, 2014 as illegal and unconstitutional. The bench also directed the government to pay Rs 20,000 as cost to Vanniar Educational Trust for pushing it into repeated litigations.