Bhubaneswar/New Delhi, Nov. 4: Forty-four deemed universities, including Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University in Bhubaneswar, which were found unfit for the deemed tag by a review panel two years ago, have failed to get a reprieve from a new committee set up by the Supreme Court.

The committee re-examined the deficiencies in these institutions pointed out by the panel constituted by the ministry of human resource development (HRD) in 2009 and decided not to differ with the earlier panel’s decision.

If the deemed status of these institutions is withdrawn, they would go back to their earlier position of being colleges and would need to be affiliated to state universities. The states and Union territories concerned would facilitate the affiliation process when the status is withdrawn from them. The apex court has already said that the career of the nearly two lakh students in these institutions should not be affected in case of any decision against the deemed universities.

The SoA University has around 10,000 students. The Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan Trust also runs a Plus Two science college in the capital.

Sources said SoA had been recognised as a deemed university by the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi, in July 2007. Two years later, it was rated as an “A” grade institution by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council.

SoA authorities said they were waiting for the Supreme Court’s final verdict and declined to comment on how it would affect the university’s reputation. “We have nothing to say at the moment since the matter is sub-judice. But legally speaking, our university is in a strong position,” said a senior SoA official.

Section 3 of the UGC Act provides for declaring an institution as deemed-to-be university keeping in view its past records and achievements in teaching and research.

The basic idea is to promote, strengthen and bring those institutions to the status of university which, for historical or any other circumstances, are not universities yet but are doing high-standard work in specialised academic fields comparable to a university.

The declaration of deemed-to-be university started in 1958 when Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, and Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, were so notified.

While initially, this was confined to a few public-funded institutions, the numbers swelled later, particularly during the last decade with more private institutions getting the status.

At present, there are 129 deemed universities, of which nearly 90 are private institutions.

The growth has occurred especially in the field of professional education like medical, engineering, health sciences and business administration. The unprecedented rise in the number of deemed universities has raised question about quality of such institutions.

In July 2009, the HRD ministry had set up an expert panel, headed by P.N. Tandon, to review the functioning of the existing deemed universities to ascertain whether these institutions were serving the purpose they were set up for.

The panel found 44 deemed universities “unworthy” for the status for lagging behind in nine quality parameters including research output, faculty resources, admission process and award of degrees, innovative teaching and governance. The panel had put these 44 institutions in ‘C’ category and had recommended immediate withdrawal of the deemed status from them.

The review panel had found 44 other institutions deficient on many counts and had kept them in ‘B’ category and had recommended that they should be given three years to comply, failing which, the status should be withdrawn. It found 38 deemed universities to have fulfilled the quality standards. A few deemed universities did not take part in the review.

Some of the “unworthy” deemed universities had challenged the findings of the review panel in the Supreme Court, which is also hearing a PIL in this regard. Last January, the apex court asked the HRD ministry to seek explanation from each of the 44 ‘C’ category deemed universities on the deficiencies pointed out by the review panel.

The ministry was also asked to conduct personal hearing for each institute and pass reasoned orders on what should be done to them. It set up a Committee of Officers, which included Ashok Thakur, special secretary, N.K. Sinha, additional secretary and S.K. Ray, former additional secretary in the HRD ministry. This committee heard each of the 44 “unworthy” deemed universities and upheld the earlier findings of the review panel.

The committee also consulted the earlier review panel, which was later converted into a committee of experts, and conducted hearing of each of these institutes.

“The committee experts, which has considered the replies from the institutions, have neither accepted the replies of the institutions nor up-graded the marking of the institutions on each of the nine parameters in any substantial way to enable any institution deemed to be university cross over from the category ‘C’ to category ‘B’. The committee of officers, on examining the matter, finds no reason to deviate from the conclusions drawn by the committee of experts,” the committee said in its report, which is in possession of The Telegraph.