HC sets up panel to keep tabs on coaching classes

The Bombay High Court on Friday appointed a four-member committee to monitor coaching classes in the state. The court has asked the committee to study the trend of coaching classes mushrooming across the state and submit a report in six months.

Earlier, the court had asked the university to suggest names to be appointed on a committee to monitor private coaching classes in the state. The court’s suggestion came after the state government submitted that it was not in a position to enact a law for the regulation of private coaching classes.

University counsel Rui Rodrigues said that nine names were suggested to the court. The court chose four members and the committee is headed by former vice-chancellor of Yashwant Rao Chavan Open University, Ashok Pradhan.

A petition filed by Forum for Fairness in Higher Education, an NGO, in 1998, had alleged that as a state-wide trend, teachers employed in government-run schools and colleges were working in private coaching classes to make an extra buck.

Assistant government pleader Madhubala Kajle had said that in the affidavit submitted to the court, the government had expressed its inability to put a law in place for regulating the functioning of coaching classes. The court had earlier said if the government was not in a position to frame a policy for regularisation of coaching classes, the court would pass its orders on it.