“16. It is unnecessary in this case to launch on a discussion about the origin, growth and flourishing of the great Universities from early times. Nor it is necessary eve to sketch their position in modern India. An effort was made in India, in early days, “to raise the standard of higher education”. The first five Universities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, and Allahabad undertook instructions and supervision as well as examination. The Senates of the Universities of the early days took in “High Court Judges, Bishops, members of Executive councils, the Provincial Directors of Public Instruction and Professors of Government and missionary colleges. (See “The New Spirit in India”, by Henry W. Nevinson, pages 4 & 5). It is not without reason that a University is thought about as “a place of light, of liberty and of learning.” (See The Governance of England, by Sioney Low, page 146). Time was when the University and its academic bodies had received the greatest of respect from courts. (See University of Mysore v. Govinda Rao , AIR 1965 S.C 491). The large number of cases in which the courts have been forced to interfere even in matters of academic character, is a sad but striking feature of the current functioning of many of the Universities. The disinclination of a court to disturb the normal functioning of these institutions of learning, cannot dissuade the court from meting out justice to a student who had suffered much. In our administration set up, the University is a constitutional instrumentality and the State coming within Article 14 of the Constitution. It cannot act arbitrarily, unfairly or unreasonably. A citizen injured by a neglect on the part of such a statutory instrumentality would be entitled to be indemnified in
