Six-year ICAR window is no shield: Rajasthan HC keeps seven private agri colleges out of JET counselling
Hearing the batch on a Sunday with the fee deadline a day away, Justice Nupur Bhati held that Clause 8.4 of the 2022 policy gives colleges time to get accredited but does not excuse the separate conditions for extending a temporary NOC, which every one of the seven had been found to breach.
Seven private agriculture colleges in Rajasthan, each with 60 sanctioned B.Sc. Agriculture seats, have lost their bid to get into this year's JET counselling. The Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur sat on Sunday, 18 October 2026, because the last date for depositing the online option form fee was midnight the next day, and by 10.20 that night Justice Nupur Bhati had dismissed all seven petitions. The colleges had argued that the State's own 2022 policy gives them six academic years from their first no-objection certificate to obtain accreditation from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and that the clock had not run out. The judge held that the six-year window is one thing and the conditions for extending a temporary NOC are another, and that the colleges had failed the second.
Who the seven are, and what they were refused
The lead petition, S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 26056 of 2026, was filed by SKD Agriculture College at Chak 7 STG, Hanumangarh, which runs under the Guru Govind Singh Charitable Trust. Heard with it were Shri Vinayak College of Agriculture on the Agra Road at Jaipur; Shri Jeetendra Godara's SLBS Krishi Mahavidyalaya at Banar on the Jodhpur-Jaipur highway; Shrinathji College of Agriculture at Upali Oden, Nathdwara, in Rajsamand district; Apex Institute of Agriculture and Research at Ranpur, Kota; Bright Career Agriculture College at Bhamatsar, Nokha, in Bikaner district; and Sorabh Agriculture College at Gram Kheda, Hindon City, in Karauli. Each is run by a registered society, trust or education company, and each is affiliated to one of five State agriculture universities, at Bikaner, Jobner, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Kota. Mr C.S. Kotwani and Mr Chinmoy Shekhar appeared for the colleges; Mr Nathu Singh Rathore, Additional Advocate General, with Mr Arpit Samdariya and Mr Deepesh Beniwal, for the respondents.
All seven had been granted temporary NOCs to run the B.Sc. Agriculture course from the 2022-23 session, generally with an intake of 60 or 120, and the State had kept extending them, the latest extension being dated 4 November 2025 for 2025-26. On 10 October 2026 the Commissioner of Agriculture passed near-identical orders refusing to extend the NOC for 2026-27. The orders record that the 2025-26 NOC had been a conditional one, granted with a relaxation, and that on examining the documents the college had not complied with specified sub-clauses of Clause 8.2 of the Policy/Procedure of 20 September 2022. No first-year admissions through JET would therefore be allowed for 2026-27, though the colleges could continue teaching students already admitted until they finished their degrees.
Two days later, on 12 October, the JET Coordinator at Swami Keshwanand Rajasthan Agricultural University, Bikaner notified the counselling schedule, and counselling began on 14 October. The colleges asked the court to quash the 10 October orders and the 2022 policy itself, and to direct that they be allowed to participate in counselling and take allotments against their 60 seats. The State's counsel wanted time to take instructions and file replies; given the deadline, they agreed to argue without one, and the petitions were heard finally at the joint request of both sides.
The deficiency sheet, college by college
The judgment reproduces a table of what each college was faulted for. All seven were found not to have complied with Clause 8.2.1, which requires an application for ICAR accreditation to have been made, and Clause 8.2.2, which requires the appointment of qualified teaching and non-teaching staff to ICAR norms. Shrinathji College was additionally faulted under Clause 8.2.9, which requires a private college to run and keep updated its own website displaying full particulars of every student allotted through the State joint entrance examination. Bright Career College was additionally faulted under Clause 8.2.5, which requires all staff salaries to be paid through the bank at ICAR, UGC or State rates, and Clause 8.2.6, which requires provident fund and employee insurance deductions and biometric attendance for all staff.
The table also lists the first NOC of each college and the date on which it gave an affidavit of compliance. Shri Vinayak, Bright Career and Sorabh got their first NOCs on 1 August 2022; Shrinathji on 31 August 2022; SLBS on 9 September 2022; Apex on 23 August 2023; and SKD on 24 August 2023, all recorded against the 2022-23 session, although the impugned order against SKD gives its first NOC year as 2021-22. Six of the seven gave affidavits in August 2023; Sorabh is the only one for which no affidavit is recorded.
What Clause 8 says
Clause 8 of the 2022 policy governs extension of a temporary NOC. Under Clause 8.1, a college with a first-time NOC can get it extended for the next four years on application. Clause 8.2 deals with colleges that have completed four years: they can get an extension for at most two more years, and only on satisfying eleven listed conditions. Besides the five already mentioned, these include satisfactory conduct of academic activities, buildings and infrastructure to ICAR standards, hostels, toilets, library and playground, a fixed deposit of the prescribed amount, an updated affiliation certificate from the university, and admissions only through the State joint entrance examination. Clause 8.3 provides for an inspection team constituted by the Commissioner with the State's prior approval, with the extension decided at State level on its recommendation.
Clause 8.4 is the one the colleges built their case on. It requires ICAR accreditation to be obtained within six academic years of the first temporary NOC. A college that fails to get it within that period cannot, in any circumstances, admit new first-year students; it gets a temporary NOC only for long enough to see its existing students through, after which the NOC lapses automatically. Clause 35 says the policy takes effect immediately and applies to existing private agriculture colleges when they apply for a temporary or permanent NOC or an increase in seats.
Six years versus eleven conditions
The colleges' counsel argued that the six years had not expired for any of them on the date of the impugned orders, so the State could not insist on accreditation yet. The policy, he said, could not be applied retrospectively to colleges whose NOCs predated it. He also pointed to the money: the State charges Rs 70,000 a year as inspection fee for the temporary NOC, and the universities take more than Rs 20 to 22 lakh in affiliation charges, so the State could not cancel NOCs arbitrarily after the colleges had invested every year and built up large infrastructure. He relied on a coordinate bench order of 4 May 2023 in Animal Husbandry Mahavidhlaya v. State of Rajasthan and a division bench order of 28 November 2025 in State of Rajasthan v. Maharaja Surajmal Agriculture College.
The State's answer was that the NOCs issued from 2023-24 through 2025-26 were expressly conditional on compliance with the policy, that the colleges had never applied for ICAR accreditation or appointed staff to ICAR standards, and that the orders were based on specific deficiencies found on the documents. During argument the AAG produced the affidavits the colleges had given, undertaking to meet all the policy's requirements and acknowledging that the State would be free to act against them if they did not. The court took the affidavits on record.
Justice Bhati agreed with the State on the structure of Clause 8. The six-year period in Clause 8.4, she held, does not dispense with the independent and mandatory requirements of Clauses 8.2.1, 8.2.2, 8.2.5, 8.2.6 and 8.2.9, which govern whether a college that has completed four years is eligible for an extension at all. Those deficiencies relate to distinct regulatory requirements and are not contingent on the accreditation period. Read together, the extension of a temporary NOC is subject to the conditions and “is not an automatic consequence of the passage of time”. Clause 8.4 cannot be read in isolation so as to make the Clause 8.2 conditions redundant; the two must be read harmoniously. Having time left to obtain accreditation does not, by itself, exempt a college from the conditions for extension.
Retrospectivity, acquiescence and the affidavits
On retrospectivity, the judge held that the question was not whether the 2022 policy reached back, but whether the requirements being enforced operate prospectively on the extension of NOCs and apply to the colleges under the governing framework. Clause 35 fixed the commencement at 22 September 2022. The record showed that after that date NOCs had been extended subject to the policy's conditions, and the colleges had produced nothing to show what prevented them from complying. They had not objected to the conditions written into their post-2022 NOCs; they had accepted the certificates and chosen not to question the conditions at the time. A challenge now to the very requirements they had acquiesced in was a relevant circumstance, she said, and the colleges could not disregard the conditions merely because compliance had become inconvenient or onerous. This attracted the principle of acquiescence and the doctrine of approbation and reprobation.
The affidavits sealed the point. After the policy came into force the colleges had sworn to comply with it and had expressly acknowledged that non-compliance would entitle the State to cancel their NOCs or take other action. The judgment reproduces the SKD affidavit, sworn by Babulal Juneja, president of the Guru Govind Singh Charitable Trust, who undertook to complete the pending points of the new policy during the 2023-24 session, to show compliance to the physical verification committee, and to withdraw any litigation against the policy. Having taken the benefit of the regulatory arrangement on those terms, the colleges could not approbate and reprobate. The judge added a qualification: an undertaking cannot validate a provision that is otherwise ultra vires or confer a power the law does not give. But no legal infirmity in the prospective application of the conditions had been shown, so the colleges could not rely on retrospectivity alone to escape obligations they had expressly undertaken.
Students, standards and the counselling deadline
The court acknowledged that the orders have consequences for the colleges and for students seeking admission this year. But the “standards and quality of education cannot be compromised or diluted” in the interest of any one institution, the judge said. Professional colleges must maintain academic standards, qualified staff and adequate infrastructure, and these conditions are safeguards rather than formalities. The urgency of the counselling schedule could not by itself justify directing the State to let the colleges participate when they had “miserably failed to establish a prima facie entitlement” to an extension in the face of what the court called a blatant violation of the policy's conditions.
For the governing principle the judge went to the Supreme Court's decision in Unni Krishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh and reproduced paragraph 69, which holds that the right to establish an educational institution carries no right to recognition or affiliation, that grant of recognition is neither automatic nor a formality, and that the recognising authority is bound to impose conditions ensuring both quality and fair admissions. Applied here, the colleges could claim no indefeasible right to continuation of their NOCs or to a place in counselling merely because they had held NOCs in earlier sessions. Where non-compliance has been recorded by the competent authority, it cannot be overlooked simply to ease participation in an admission process already under way.
Order
The court held that the colleges were required to comply with the 2022 Policy/Procedure and with the conditions written into their later temporary NOCs, and that they had failed to show that the orders of 10 October 2026 refusing extension for 2026-27 warranted interference under Article 226. All seven writ petitions were dismissed with no order as to costs. The batch was reserved at 12.15 p.m. and pronounced at 10.20 p.m. on 18 October 2026, the day before the option form fee deadline. The order is marked reportable. Students already enrolled at the seven colleges are unaffected by the refusal: the 10 October orders themselves allow those colleges to run until their existing batches complete their degrees.