HC grants more time to CEPT for reply

Times of India: Ahmedabad: Wednesday, August 20, 2014.

Gujarat high court has granted more time to the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (Cept) University to reply as to why it had decided to shelve the master's programme on the subject of climate change.

The university has been asked to submit its reply by August 25, when the court has kept further hearing.

Two former students of Climate Change and Sustainable Development under the Faculty of Sustainable Environment and Climate change have filed a PIL taking exception to the university's decision to discontinue with the MTech course without following proper procedure. They argued that the university did not follow the suggestion made by a committee and ignored the recommendation of the dean, Dr Shravan Kumar Acharya.

Their PIL maintained that the executive council of the university had met on October 25, 2012 and decided to discontinue this course. This course was launched in 2010. The petitioner came to know about this and sought information from the university but the authority did not provide any explanation. Finally, Shastri obtained the information through an RTI application.

The details revealed that the dean had written a four-page mail to the university, saying that this course on climate change was a unique one and it is not available in the western zone of the country. Hence, it should not be discontinued. The petitioner also came to know that a committee had recommended that this course be merged with another course (Sustainable Architecture & Environment Planning) but this suggestion was also ignored.

The petitioner claimed that the batch of 22 students of this course was shifted to the Planning & Public Policy course that has nothing to do with the issue of climate change.

The petitioners have submitted that the country at this juncture spends quite a lot to deal with the problem of environment and climate change. Hence, this is the proper time to nurture local talent in this discipline and not to rely much on experts from other countries.