Judgment

Thakker, J.—Leave granted.

2. In all these matters, orders passed by a Division Bench of the High Court of Madras dated December 13, 2004, have been challenged. By the said orders, the Division Bench allowed the appeals filed by the respondent-Regional Director, Southern Regional Com­mittee, National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) Bangalore, set aside the orders passed by the learned Single Judge and upheld the condition imposed on the appellants to start new course in teacher-training education and admit students from the academic year 2005-06.

3. In all the three cases, the facts are more or less similar. We, therefore, refer to the first matter (Krishnasamy Reddiar Educational Trust vs. Member Secretary, N.C.T.E. & Anr., SLP (C) No. 2911 of 2005). The appellant-trust made an application for recognition on 30th December, 2003 to the respondent for offering training in teacher education and for starting Elementary Teachers Training Course for the academic year 2004-2005. The application was submitted on December 30, 2004 in accordance with Section 14 of the National Council for Teachers Education Act, 1993 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”) and the National Council for Teacher Education (Form of application for recognition, the time limit of submission of application, determination of norms and standards for recognition of teacher education programmes and permission to start new course or training) Regulations, 2002 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Regulations’). The application, however was submitted without “No Objection Certificate” (“NOC” for short) from the State Government. It was the case of the appellant that it applied for NOC on October 31, 2003. The Government, however, did not take any decision for sufficient long time. Only on December 26, 2003 the decision was taken by the Cabinet to grant NOC to the appellant. NOC was, however, actually granted as late as on January 30, 2004. NOC was submitted to the respondent on 2nd February, 2004, 31st January, 2004 and 1st February, 2004 being public holidays. It is the case of the appellant that no action was taken by the respondent on the application of the appellant. The appellant, therefore, was constrained to file a petition being Writ Petition No. 18107 of 2004 and an order was passed by the High Court on 13th June, 2004 to carry out inspection. Inspection was accordingly carried out on September 20, 2004 and by an order dated October 28, 2004, recognition was granted by the respondent under Section 14 of the Act on the terms and conditions mentioned in the said order.

Condition No.3 of the order is material and reads thus:

“Further SRC also noted that the institution has submitted the NOC belatedly on 2nd February, 2004 i.e. after 31st December, 2003 the cut off date for submission of applications. As per NCTE regulations, only completed applications submitted before 31st December will be considered for recognition for the ensuing academic year. The application of Krishnasamy Teacher Training Institute was incomplete as on 31st December 2003 and hence recognition is being granted from the session 2005-2006.” (emphasis supplied)

4. Condition No.3 was clear and stated that the application of the appellant institution for recognition was granted by NCTE from the academic session 2005-06. The appellant was aggrieved by the said condition and hence it instituted a petition being Writ Petition No. 31913 of 2004. The learned single Judge, by an order dated November 08, 2004, allowed the petition and directed the respondent to consider the claim of the appellant-petitioner ‘positively’ and ‘permit’ the students in the academic year 2004-05 and thus allowed the petition. For passing the said order, the learned single Judge observed that the appellant-petitioner had submitted the application prior to the cut-off date. It was also observed that a similar order was passed in Writ Petition No. 28280 of 2004 on 5th October, 2004 and the respondents w