Mysuru: In a huge relief to thousands of students of Karnataka State Open University (KSOU), the High Court of Karnataka has permitted the State Government to implement suggestions of an expert committee, which has recommended the State to initiate a one-time measure to validate marks cards issued to students of non-technical in-house courses for academic years 2013-14 and 2014-15.

However, the government for now cannot act on the other recommendations of the committee. The Court modified the order while hearing a petition filed by the KSOU Non-Teaching Employees’ Association, which had questioned the government’s power to constitute the expert committee to look into issues of KSOU while contending that only the Chancellor has such power.

Disclosing this to Star of Mysore, KSOU Registrar Prof. Chandrashekar said that the Court has directed to validate the marks cards of in-house programmes and not the courses that the University offered in collaboration with other Universities and institutions. “We will wait for the Government Order and will distribute marks cards of academic years 2013-14 and 2014-15,” he added.

Meanwhile, the contempt of court petition filed by the KSOU authorities against the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the High Court will come up for hearing on Feb. 8. The petition was filed against the UGC for not obeying the direction over granting renewal of affiliation.

On December 12, 2017, the High Court had issued an order directing UGC to give recognition to KSOU for 2017-18 academic year within two weeks of the order and the UGC has not communicated anything to the Open University so far.

NEWS-8