New Delhi, Feb. 13: The Supreme Court has mandated that no state should allow registration of a private university without it having a campus, faculties, library and other facilities.

But the bench, which quashed the establishment of 117 universities in Chhattisgarh last week, however, recognised a state?s and a private individual?s ?right to establish a university?.

The bench of Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti and Justices G.P. Mathur and P.K. Balasubramanyan said the ?right to establish a university? did not mean that an educational institution or a private person or a body having no proper facilities could be recognised as a university.

The court said every state legislature passing a law enabling the establishment of private universities should insist that ?only an institution with all the infrastructural facilities, where teaching and research on a wide range of subjects and of a particular level are actually done, acquires the status of a university?.

It underlined the role of the University Grants Commission in recognising universities and said the Chhattisgarh University Establishment Act had negated the UGC?s role and hence deserved to be struck down as ?null and void?.

Mushrooming of private universities without following the UGC guidelines ?is bound to create havoc with the system of higher education in the country and would result in nullifying the main object for which (the) UGC has been established?, the judges ruled.

The Chhattisgarh statute was enacted and the 117 universities were established during the regime of the Ajit Jogi-led Congress government in the state. The BJP government, which succeeded the Jogi regime, closed down 90 of the universities but amended the law to provide that private universities in the state should have 15 to 25 acres of land and a corpus fund of Rs 2 crore.

?What is necessary is actual establishment of institutions having all the infrastructural facilities and qualified teachers to teach there? and not a ?pittance? of Rs 2 crore and land records proving ownership of 15 to 25 acres, the apex court said.