Rajalakshmi Engineering College rapped by Madras HC for withholding monetary aid from government

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has rapped the management of a college of engineering near here for withholding the financial assistance provided by the government to a poor student thereby causing problems to him. Owing to the fact that Rajalakshmi Engineering College had held the money due to the petitioner for being reimbursed to a branch of Indian Bank, the petitioner was subjected to ignominy, in that he had been visited with notices both legally and also from the Lok Adalat and had been pestered to such an extent as if he had flown away with the money.

For no fault of the petitioner, he had been made to suffer mental and monetary ordeal by the bank, which had not extended the moratorium period. The petitioner could not claim an extension of the moratorium, but definitely, he was entitled to the amount from the college, which, if it had been reimbursed at the earliest, would not have resulted in the situation he had faced and also the resultant monetary loss in the form of interest and penal interest.

"The said sufferings of the petitioner definitely warrant compensation at the hands of the college towards interest for the amount being held by it, which was due to be paid to the petitioner towards reimbursement of the bank loan," Justice M Dhandapani has said.

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The Bench was disposing of a writ petition recently from C Ashok Kumar, who prayed for a direction to the Registrar of Anna University and the Commissioner of Technical Education to consider his representation and to recover from the college the entire education fee paid to it under various heads during the course and along with interest and other incidental charges incurred by him on the educational loan account and refund the same to him to enable him to re-pay the outstanding loan amount to the bank.

The judge directed Anna University and the Technical Education Commissioner to take appropriate action against the college for the wrongful withholding of the amount given towards financial assistance by the government. He directed the college to return the amount of Rs 60,000 (Rs 20,000 for each year) along with interest at 7.5 per cent per annum from the date of receipt of the amount by the college from the government till the date of payment to the petitioner.

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Since the non-payment of the money taken towards education loan by the petitioner from the bank was not due to any of his fault, though this court is conscious of the fact that the period of moratorium cannot be extended for the cause of the petitioner alone taking into consideration the unique circumstances, the bank higher authorities may look into the case for waiver of interest over and above the interest granted by this court, so that the petitioner from a economically weaker section of society can breathe a bit at least after such a belated point of time, the judge said.