Admissions to unaided minority-run management institutions in Maharashtra and other states are stuck, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling on October 31, 2002. The court's verdict has cast a pall of uncertainty over entrance examinations to these institutes.

The court ruled that unaided minority institutions can conduct entrance examinations for 100 per cent of their seats. Prior to the court ruling, they were allowed to conduct examinations for 50 per cent of their seats, with the entrance exam for the remaining seats being conducted by the All-India Council of Technical Education, a central government body. In Mumbai, some 17 of the 20 management institutes are run by minority groups.

The ruling has wider ramifications because it applies to unaided minority-run engineering, architecture and other professional colleges too.

But TK Nath, legal adviser to the AICTE, says, "Most of the institutes are aided by the government and in these cases it is up to the state governments and the respective institutions to decide on a further course of action."

As a result, advertisements that usually appear every year around January, when the AICTE (through the directorate of technical education in the states) places them in newspapers, inviting students to appear for a centralised admission examination have failed to appear this year.

Says Nath: "Before the ads are published, the exact arrangements have to be worked out between the state governments and the institutions analysing how many seats will be allocated through the institutes."

Notes Maharashtra's secretary for higher and technical education Vimla Iyengar: "While it is true that these advertisements by AICTE are not out, the same holds true for the advertisements by these very management institutes. The state government is apprised of the situation and will come out with a formal policy by February."

One outcome of the court ruling is that state governments will lose a few crores of rupees from the sale of admission forms for holding a centralised entrance examination. The AICTE got a Rs 1,000 fee for the sale of an examination form, and an admission fee, which used to go to the state governments.

The Maharashtra government alone stands to lose Rs 4-6 crore (Rs 40 -60 million) as it sells 40,000 to 60,000 forms every year, and may now not be able to conduct examination for seats in unaided minority institutes.

The state government hopes that the management institutes will not be able to hold the exams themselves. Another Maharashtra government official told Business Standard, "If the managements of these institutions feel that they are not able to conduct these examinations by themselves, they may very well enter an agreement with the state government, empowering it to hold them." The state government has also set up a Cabinet sub-committee to look into the issue of reservation and admission procedures for these institutes.

The ruling has other implications too. The court said because minority institutions already had quotas based on linguistic minorities, they need not further offer seats for the reserved class (for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). State governments nominate candidates for the reserved seats.

Under the centralised admission process, 15 per cent of the seats are earmarked for students from outside the state, 15 per cent for those outside the city's university, another 56 per cent for the special category (ST/SC), leaving only 14 per cent based for meritorious students.

Even within this 14 per cent, 5 per cent is reserved for NRIs. As a result of the court's verdict, all seats have to be offered on merit.

Educational institutions have decided to put on hold the admission process so far as admission for reserved seats are concerned. Says South Indian Education Society dean K Neelankantan: "As a minority institution, we have the right to conduct our own examination and admission for 50 per cent of the seats. As far as the balance seats are concerned, wherein students were admitted based on the central admission process, we will wait for the final verdict and see what other institutions will do."

The third implication is that the centralised admission process will be less important than before. In turn, the role of the directorate of technical education, AICTE's arm in the states, in playing a regulatory and supervisory role will be reduced. The directorate used to oversee the admission of students to Maharashtra's 150 universities and colleges.

The Maharashtra government has also appointed a sub-committee chaired by Minister of Higher and Technical Education Dilip Valse Patil to look into the Supreme Court ruling. Nath says the AICTE, too, has set up a task force to study the outcome of the ruling and its report is due in three weeks.