The Supreme Court's judgment has come even as the HRD Ministry has decided to make both AICTE and UGC accreditation mandatory for all higher educational institutes including those conducting MBA and MCA programmes.
Keeping in view the mushrooming higher educational institutes offering MBA, MCA, and Engineering, the HRD Ministry went for the significant policy change in the accreditation policy for a higher educational institute in February this year.
HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju last December had also announced a new accreditation body - Indian Board of Accreditation (IBA). He said that IBA was a new initiative by AICTE just like the existing National Board of Accreditation (NBA), which too has a role for accreditation and renewal related works.
The UGC and AICTE accreditation for every higher educational institution and every programme was aimed at certifying academic quality. AICTE is the apex body of technical and management educational institutes in the country.
The new accreditation norms came as the fate of the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010 continues to hang in the balance in Parliament.
At present, AICTE is overburdened with affiliation applications from thousands of institutes and over 60,000 programmes from the diploma level to post-graduate level in Engineering and Technology, Architecture, Pharmacy, Town Planning and Management Studies.