Cuttack, Sept. 4: Orissa High Court today declined to issue an order to restrain termination of MoUs signed by Ravenshaw University.

Deals were inked with private service providers for running self-financing courses in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.

The court rejected the pleas of Heritage Vision Education Trust and Star Computers Institute Pvt. Limited, with whom Ravenshaw University had executed MoUs for three years on August 29, 2011, for running six self-financing courses.

On May 27, the registrar of the university issued letters to both the private service providers informing them that the university would run the courses from the current academic session directly.

Disallowing the petitions, the single judge bench of Justice S.C. Parija upheld the June 26 order of the court of the district judge of Cuttack which said: “The students taking admission in various courses in Ravenshaw University should not suffer due to the legal tangles between the petitioner and opposing parties. The welfare of the students is of paramount importance for the court.”

Ravenshaw had signed an MoU with Heritage Vision Education Trust for running self-financing courses in bachelor in business administration (BBA), BSc (information science and telecommunication), MA (journalism and mass communication) and MSc (electronics and telecommunication).

In his counter affidavit filed in the high court, Ravenshaw University registrar Padan Kumar Jena said the decision to stop the trend of continuing the PPP mode of arrangement for running courses and not to renew the MoUs further was taken after receiving direction from the chancellor.

“No university, whether central, state, private or dee-med, can offer its programmes through franchising arrangement with private coaching institutions even for the purpose of conducting courses thro-ugh distance mode,” an UGC notification has said earlier.

Jena said Ravenshaw University had started teaching second and third-year students who had taken admission in the self-financing courses for the year 2012-13 and 2013-14.

“The National Assessment and Accreditation Council team will be visiting the university shortly and further continuation of the PPP model in any of the courses run by the university may cause disaffiliation from the UGC. As a result the university will suffer irreparable losses, which cannot be compensated by any means,” the registrar said.