The right to establish educational institutions is a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(g) and can only be restricted by law; a mere policy decision cannot impose a general ban on new institutions.

JUDGMENT

Rekha Palli, J. The present batch of petitions preferred under Article 226 of the Constitution of India assail the decision of the National Council for Teacher Education ("NCTE") refusing to open its online web portal for submission of applications from institutions desirous of seeking recognition of teachers' education courses. The petitioners also seek a consequential direction to the respondent NCTE to open its portal and accept and process their applications for the next academic session as per clause 5(6) of the NCTE (Recognition Norms and Procedure) Regulations, 2014 ("Regulations") Since the issues raised in these petitions are common, for the sake of convenience, reference is being made only to the facts in W.P.(C) No. 2813/2021.

Brief Factual Matrix:

2. The petitioner is an unaided and self-financed educational institution established by a registered society named `Mehta Education Society'. The respondent No.1/NCTE is a statutory board established under. The National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993. ("the Act") for the purpose of achieving planned and co-ordinated development of teacher education system in the country. The respondent no.2/Western Regional Committee ("WRC") is one of the four regional committees under the respondent no.1.

3. The petitioner college upon being granted recognition by the Northern Regional Committee ("NRC") on 26.03.2015, commenced its B.Ed. course. On 30.05.2016, the petitioner, being desirous of running the integrated course of BA.B.Ed/BSc.B.Ed, submitted an application to the NRC seeking grant of recognition for running the said courses. Upon scrutiny of the petitioner's application by the NRC, it was issued a show cause notice on 19.01.2017, the petitioners' reply whereto was found unsatisfactory. Consequently, its application was rejected by the NRC on 28.04.2017.

4. Though, the petitioner could have assailed this rejection order by way of a statutory remedy of appeal before the NCTE, it did not do so and instead chose to wait for the NCTE to invite fresh applications for the next academic session. The respondents, however, did not invite any applications for grant of recognition, and instead issued public notices in the years 2017 and 2018, stating therein that, it would not be accepting any new applications for the academic sessions 2017-18 and 2018-19. The position remained the same in the next four years, except in 2019, when applications for one programme, namely the `Four-year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (Pre-Primary to Primary and Upper Primary to Secondary' ("integrated programme") from some states were invited, but even these applications were subsequently not processed. It is in these circumstances that the petitioners, who have not been able to submit any application for any new course during the last six years, i.e. after 2016, have approached this Court seeking a writ of mandamus directing the respondent no.1 to open the portal and accept online applications sought to be submitted to them under clause 5(5) of the National Council for Teacher Education (Recognition Norms and Procedure) Regulations, 2014 ("the Regulations") for grant of recognition for running B.A.B.E.d/B.Sc.B.E.d course in the academic session 2022-23. The petitione