The Supreme Court Monday set aside the Telangana High Court's orders fixing fee structure of unaided minority and non-minority institutions for engineering courses for 2016-17 and 2018-19 academic years.
Restoring the fees fixed by Telangana Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (TAFRC), the top court was severe in its criticism of the high court's decision to fix on its own the fees structure to be levied from engineering students in the state.
"The court, in the garb of judicial review, cannot usurp the jurisdiction of the decision maker and make the decision itself. Neither can it act as an appellate authority of the TFARC," a bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Naveen Sinha said.
"We, therefore, hold that the High Court exceeded its jurisdiction in interfering with the recommendation of the TAFRC for reasons discussed. The orders of the High Court are set aside. The recommendation of the TAFRC dated February 4, 2017 for the block period 2016-2017 and 2018-2019 is restored," the court said.
It noted that by its earlier verdict, the top court had directed for the establishment in each state, a Committee to regulate the fee structure in unaided minority and non-minority educational institutions.
In pursuance of the apex court verdict, the Telangana government had constituted TAFRC which is headed by a former high court judge and also consist several experts of various fields to determine the fee structure subject to approval by the state government.
The fee structure notified by the government for Bachelor of Engineering and B.Tech courses for 2016-17 and 2018-19 were challenged twice before the high court.
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Opining that the fixation was not proper, the high court itself proceeded to fix the fee structure to its satisfaction.
Aggrieved by the order, the State government approached the apex court which set aside the high court order and restored the decision of fee regulatory committee.
The court noted that the TAFRC was a statutory body headed by a retired High Court judge and consists of domain experts from various fields including two from the finance sector, one of which is from the Government.
"The recommendations of the TAFRC being the resultant of a quasi-judicial decision making process, it will undoubtedly be amenable to the jurisdiction of the court for scrutiny by judicial review, so as to ensure adherence to the constitutional principles of reasonableness, fairness and adherence to the law under Article 14 of the Constitution," the bench said.
It said that the judicial review, lies against the decision making process and not the merits of the decision itself.
The top court said that if the decision making process is flawed by violation of the basic principles of natural justice or is ultra-vires the powers of the decision maker or takes into consideration irrelevant materials or excludes relevant materials then the court may step in to correct the error.
"It needs no emphasis that complex executive decisions in economic matters are necessarily empiric and based on experimentation. Its validity cannot be tested on any rigid principles or the application of any straitjacket formula. The court while adjudging the validity of an executive decision in economic matters must grant a certain measure of freedom or play in the joints to the executive," the bench said.
It said that not mere errors, but only "palpably arbitrary decisions" alone can be interfered with in judicial review.
"The court should therefore be loath to interfere with such recommendation of an expert body, and accepted by the government, unless it suffers from the vice of arbitrariness, irrationality, perversity or violates any provisions of the law under which it is constituted," the bench said.