Madras HC refuses to cancel the license of educational trust chaired by minister EV Velu's wife

CHENNAI: The Chief Bench of the Madras High Court refused to cancel the license of Saraswathi Ammal Educational Trust chaired by the wife of minister EV Velu and directed AICTE to consider the petition alleging that the Trust fraudulently obtained a license to run colleges.

The Chief Bench comprising Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala and Justice J Sathya Narayana Prasad heard a petition moved by TS Sankar seeking to cancel the license of Saraswathi Ammal Educational Trust in Tiruvannamalai.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted that in 1993 the Trust had constructed the college and obtained a license through fraudulent documents.

According to the rules of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), every education institute must have 20 acres of land to obtain a license, but the Trust fraudulently obtained the license as they only had 7.5 acres of land at that time.

Hence, the counsel sought to cancel the license.

Senior counsel P Wilson, representing the educational trust submitted that it has 24.66 acres of land and the AICTE also approved the land.

It was also submitted that a vendor cheated the trust by selling land encroaching upon a water body, after it was found by the trust, the land was returned to the government, and purchased another land to construct the college.

The petitioner has invented a story with old land survey numbers and filed this petition, said the counsel.

After the submission, the bench refused to cancel the license and directed the AICTE to consider the request of the petitioner, as it is the expert body to do so, and disposed of the petition.

When the petitioner submitted that minister EV Velu threatened him for filing a case against the educational trust, the bench directed him to approach the court concerned.