New Delhi: The future of scores of graduates looks gloomy after the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that those who obtained degrees through correspondence courses from deemed universities post 2001 were invalid. The apex court passed the judgment while hearing the validity of distance courses offered by four deemed universities -JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Institute of Advanced Studies in Education in Rajasthan, Allahabad Agricultural Institute and Vinayaka Mission's Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu.

Incidentally, the aforementioned universities have been offering correspondence engineering courses since 2001 despite disapproval by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The bench, headed by AK Goel and UU Lalit observed that AICTE and UGC didn’t grant permission for engineering courses through correspondence and Distance Education Council (DEC) approval is not valid. “We restrain all deemed to be universities to carry on any course in distance education mode from the academic session 2018-19 on wards unless and until it is permissible to conduct such courses in distance education mode and specific permissions are granted by the concerned statutory regulatory authorities in respect of each of those courses,” the bench said.

Meanwhile, considering students future, the apex body gave a breather to students of 2001 to 2005 batch asking them to take a fresh examination to be conducted by AICTE. However, it refused to exempt students who enrolled post 2005 citing that they were aware of the loopholes.