Indore (Madhya Pradesh): In a major relief to nearly 3 lakh students, the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday stayed the hike in affiliation free by Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya. The university has recently increased the fee for granting affiliation to colleges, a move which was challenged in the High Court. Devi Ahilya Private Education College Directors Association had filed a petition in the court with a request to cancel the university’s notification pertaining to an increase in affiliation fees.
“With no justification, the university almost doubled the affiliation fee. We requested the university to consider the decision but our demand fell on deaf ears so we had no other option but to knock doors of the court,” association president Abhay Pandey said. Office bearers of the association, Girdhar Nagar and Ravi Bhadoriya said that the DAVV’s move of increasing fee for granting affiliation to colleges would have a rippling effect on students.
“The colleges would increase tuition fee for meeting the hike in their expenses leading to students being on the receiving end,” the duo said. The court noted that a similar matter has been entertained by the Principal seat at Jabalpur wherein by way of interim order the petitioner has been directed to deposit 1/3 of the total affiliation fee. To this, the petition’s counsel Veer Kumar Jain informed the court that the colleges have deposited 50 per cent of the affiliation fee.
A division bench of Justice SA Dharmadhikari and Justice Devnarayan Mishra ruled, “As an interim measure, it is directed that since the petitioner has already deposited 50 per cent of the affiliation fee, the remaining 50 per cent of the amount shall remain stayed. All further actions by the respondent (s) will be subject to the further orders of this court.”
Uniform structure of affiliation fee
Bringing to an end the face-off between DAVV and RGPV, who were clashing over jurisdiction, the coordination committee for higher education in August approved a proposal for a uniform structure of affiliation fees for the same course in all state-run universities. Following the decision, DAVV had rationalised the affiliation fee structures of BA, BCom, BSc and other courses but the same could not be implemented from session 2023-24 as colleges had obtained affiliation by June end.
As the decision could not be implemented retrospectively, DAVV had decided to implement it from session 2024-25. The affiliation fees of BA, BCom, BSc and other courses were raised by more than 100 per cent and affiliation fee of MBA colleges was also increased up to Rs 60,000.
How the dispute of fee started
It all started about three years ago when DAVV increased affiliation fees and imposed up to 25 per cent penalty on MBA colleges which applied for affiliation after the prescribed deadline had passed. To this, the MBA colleges united against DAVV and opposed the hike in affiliation fees and exorbitant penalties. However, the university did not budge. As a result, six b-schools went under the umbrella of RGPV which happily granted affiliation to the management institutes from Indore.
Four more followed later promoting DAVV to write to RGPV not to grant affiliation to MBA colleges under the former’s jurisdiction. The letter, however, fell on deaf ears and RGPV admitted applications for affiliation from more colleges wishing to start MBA courses from session 2023-24.
To this, DAVV lodged a complaint with the Department of Higher Education (DHE) stating that if the college under the purview of one university was allowed to take affiliation from some other university just because of low affiliation fees, then the system in place would get disrupted. DHE had agreed to DAVV’s point of view and consequently proposed a uniform fee for not only the MBA course but for other courses as well. The proposal was placed before the coordination committee which gave its nod to it.
