JUDGMENT

A. K. Patnaik, J. —

Leave granted.

2. These are appeals by special leave against the impugned orders of the Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court.

3. The facts very briefly are that the respondents are different unaided private professional and educational colleges and institutions in the State of Gujarat. The fees for admission to the private unaided professional and educational colleges and institutions in the State of Gujarat are regulated by the Gujarat Professional Technical Educational Colleges or Institutions (Regulation of Admission Fixation of Fees) Act, 2007 (for short ‘the Act’), which came into effect on 30.04.2008. Section 9 of the Act provides that the State Government shall, for the purpose of determining the fees for admission of students in the professional educational colleges or institutions, constitute a Fee Regulatory Committee with a retired judge of the High Court nominated by the State Government as its Chairperson. Section 10(1) of the Act provides that the Fee Regulatory Committee shall determine the fee structure for admission of students in the professional course and different fee structure may be determined for admission of students in different professional courses and in different professional educational colleges or institutions. Section 10(3) of the Act states that the fee structure so determined by the Fee Regulatory Committee shall be binding on the unaided professional educational colleges or institutions for a period of three years and the fee so determined shall be applicable to a student who is admitted to a professional educational college or institution in that academic year and shall not be revised till the completion of his professional course in that college or institution. Section 11(1) of the Act provides that the Fee Regulatory Committee shall determine and fix the fee or fees to be charged by an unaided professional education college or institution taking into consideration the factors mentioned therein and one of the factors mentioned therein is the expenditure on administration and maintenance. In accordance with these provisions of the Act, the Fee Regulatory Committee determined the fees for the students of the unaided professional educational colleges and institutions in the State of Gujarat for the three academic years 2008-2009, 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 by different orders for different colleges and institutions passed in the years 2009 and 2010. When the State Government accepted the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission for revision of the pay and allowances of the employees with effect from 01.01.2006, different private engineering and technical colleges and institutions sought revision of the fees for students admitted in their colleges and institutions before the Fee Regulatory Committee on the ground that they have to pay their teaching and non-teaching staff the revised pay and allowances as per the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission, but the Fee Regulatory Committee declined to revise the fees.

4. The respondents-colleges/institutions then moved the High Court in different writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution and by the impugned orders, the High Court held that the Self-Finance Institutions, like the institutions of the respondents, are liable to pay salary and allowances to its teaching and non-teaching staff on the basis of the recommendations made by the Sixth Pay Commission and the revision of pay of Teachers in accordance with the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission is one of the criteria to be taken into consideration for determination of fee by the Fee Regulatory Committee. The High Court, relying on its orders passed in similar cases, set aside the orders of the Fee Regulatory Committee and remitted the matters to the Fee Regulatory Committee for fresh consideration and decision in accordance with the observations made in the impugned orders. The High Court also held that if the respondents file undertaking