New Delhi, Feb. 14: Human resource development minister Arjun Singh has asked the University Grants Commission to set up a committee to help students of offshore branches of the universities of Chhattisgarh quashed by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a Chhattisgarh law, thus quashing the setting up of 117 private universities.

The court was responding to a public interest litigation filed by former UGC chairperson Yashpal which listed as many as 90 mala fide universities.

Prominent among these were Amity University, Rai University and Aptech University. The institutions have been asked to approach duly recognised universities to accept the students who are in a spot because of the judgment.

The court had said, ?keeping in view the interests of the students?, the institutions and departments under the penalised universities could now be affiliated to existing varsities.

According to the ministry, the branches situated in different parts of the country are facing the problem of finding an university to which they can get affiliated.

Chhattisgarh?s Amity University has branches in Noida and Gurgaon. Noida is part of Uttar Pradesh and the nearest university is the Meerut University. The Noida branch of Amity, however, does not want its students to get a Meerut University degree. The students in the Gurgaon branches face a similar problem.

The ministry has asked the UGC to ensure the students are not adversely affected.

The UGC sponsored committee will scrutinise the status of these offshore institutions and ascertain how many are functioning properly.

The UGC ? despite having set up a screening committee in 2003 ? was not able to weed out sub-standard private universities and they continued to mushroom. Chhattisgarh had around 137 private universities, many of which functioned from one or two rooms.

The PIL filed by Yashpal said: ?After the Chhattisgarh state act came into force the state government established universities simply by issuing gazette notifications in an indiscriminate and mechanical manner.?

It disregarded the UGC guidelines on the requirements for setting up a university. The court order has put the students in a tight corner. Most say they are ?doomed? if the universities are shut down.