Pradip Ghosh And ANR. v. State Of West Bengal And ORS.

11.12.2025 Court No.17 SK

IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA

CONSTITUTIONAL WRIT JURISDICTION WPA 26470 of 2025 Shri Pradip Ghosh & Anr.

Vs.

The State of West Bengal & Ors.

Mr. Piyush Chaturvedi, Sr. Adv., Mr. Biswajit De, Mr. Subhajit De, Mr. Vinaeyak Chaturvedi ... for the Petitioners.

Mr. Sirsanya Bandopadhyay, Sr. St. Counsel, Ms. Tapati Samanta ...for the State.

Ms. Debjani Sengupta,(VC), Ms. Shahina Haque, Mr. Abhijit Chatterjee, Ms. Koyel Bag ...for the Vidyasagar University.

Mr. Anil Kr. Gupta ...for the U.G.C.

Midnapore City College, the petitioner no. 2 herein, is a college affiliated to Vidyasagar University for certain courses. The petitioner no. 2 herein is the Director of the said College.

The said College, on February 08, 2024 had applied to the Principal Secretary, Higher Education Department, Government of West Bengal for issuance of 'No Objection Certificate' (NOC) in respect of one Undergraduate Course (B.Sc. Honours in Geoinformatics), three Post Graduate Diploma courses in Geoinformatics, Epidemiology and Public Health as well as Public Health Management and one Post Graduate course (M.Sc. in Geoinformatics).

The college has also applied for change of nomenclature of the course M.Sc. in Fishery Science to Master of Fisheries Science [M.F. Sc.].

The grievance of the petitioners is that no steps have been taken by the Higher Education Department to consider the said prayer of the petitioners' college. Mr. Sirsanya Bandopadhyay, learned senior standing counsel submits that the State Government vide

Notification bearing No. 625-Edn (U)/1U (WBSCHE)- 01/19 dated July 26, 2022, has constituted the West Bengal State Council of Higher Education with a view to look after the academic development of all States Higher Educational Institutions and also to suggest better means of upliftment of quality of higher education in the State. The Council, in terms of the said guideline, is required to cause inspection through an enquiry committee to examine the proposal verifying different factors and the Committee shall prepare a report, the Council, on the basis of the said report will take the final decision, to complete the said drill, some time is necessary.

The Higher Education Department, Government of West Bengal, therefore is directed to dispose of the prayer of the petitioner regarding the NOC in respect of the said courses as expeditiously as possible, preferably within a period of four weeks from the date of communication of this order.

The petitioner College is granted liberty to file an appropriate representation before the Higher Education Department, Government of West Bengal within a period of a week from date praying consideration of its prayer for change of the nomenclature of the course M.Sc. in Fishery Science to Master of Fisheries Science [M.F. Sc.] and depending upon the outcome of the said decision, liberty is granted to the college to apply before the Vidyasagar University for forward steps.

W.P.A. 26470 of 2025 is disposed of with the above terms without any order as to costs.

Parties to act on the server copy of this order duly downloaded from the official website of this Court. Urgent Photostat certified copy of this order, if applied for, be supplied to the parties, subject to compliance of all requisite formalities.

(Biswajit Basu, J.)