BHARATI H. DANGRE, J.

1. The Three Writ Petitions revolve around a pivotal issue of autonomy granted to the College of Engineering, Pune and the scope of interference in the affairs of the said College at the instance of the State Government.

Writ Petition No.3919 of 2015 is instituted by the College of Engineering, Pune itself, praying for quashing and setting aside the decision of the State of Maharashtra, thereby disapproving the appointments effected by it on several grounds and declaring 54 candidates to be not qualified to hold the post of lecturer in the Institute and resultantly directing their termination.

Writ Petition Stamp No.34785 of 2018 is filed by the persons who are aggrieved by their discontinuation on the respective post of teaching faculty and their grievance is about the manner in which their services have been discontinued without any act attributed to them individually. Another Writ Petition 3592 of 2015 is filed by the Abhiyantriki Mahavidyalay Rajpatrit Adhyapak/Adhikari Sangh which is a Government recognized Association and it seeks relief of issuance of writ in the nature of mandamus, directing the College of Engineering, Pune to forthwith take steps for the purpose of implementing the decision of the State Government, thereby removing 54 persons as recommended in the enquiry.

2. With the consent of the parties, we have heard all the three writ petitions together and since they were to be finally heard, we issue Rule in all the writ petitions and proceed to hear the same finally since the pleadings in the petition are completed.

3. The College of Engineering, Pune (hereinafter referred to as "CoEP") is a technical institute which was started in the year 1854 and the said Institute claims to have produced alumni like Bharat Ratna, Vishweshwaram. The said Institute imparts education in various faculties of technical education and there is no dispute amongst the parties that it is one of the acclaimed institution in the field of technical education.

In the year 2002, the Government of India decided to implement the Technical Education, Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP)/sub-sector development programme for improving the quality of technical education in India. A substantial amount in form of loan of Rs. Five thousand crore was made available from World Bank for the said purpose. The project primarily aimed at making India a developed and confident nation by producing world class engineers through qualitative changes in the technical education system. The Ministry of Human Resources and Development undertook the process of selecting various engineering colleges and polytechnics for the said purpose and it set out certain criteria and it was held out that the institutes fulfilling the said criteria will be entitled for a substantial financial support of Rs.50 crore for the lead institute, Rs.10 crore for a network institute and Rs. Five Crore for the lead polytechnic. It was expected that the engineering colleges, by implementation of the said programme would be brought on par with the IITs. The said Government Resolution identified three engineering colleges in the State and eight polytechnic colleges for being conferred with the said privilege. The list of engineering colleges included the petitioner college i.e. Government College of Engineering, Pune.

The said Government Resolution categorically approved the changes in the field of administrative matters, academic matters and financial matters on the autonomy being conferred on the Institutes selected by the said Government Resolution. It is the case of the petitioner that the petitioner Institute was selected under the programme and this conferred an academic, financial and administrative autonomy on the college which was a means to attain higher standards and creativity in future. The autonomous institutions, according to the petitioner, were themselves entirely responsible for the education, other concerned matters and the quality of educatio