Arunachal Pradesh:
“No Reply/Response Has Been Received”

Background: why this RTI was filed

“UGC approved course” is one of the most common phrases in Indian education marketing, and one of the least meaningful. It appears on prospectuses, hoardings and admission websites, and it is generally accepted without question by the students and parents it is aimed at. It describes something the University Grants Commission does not do.

The confusion is structurally encouraged. State private universities are created by acts of state legislatures, listed by the UGC under Section 2(f), and supervised in practice by state higher education departments — while professional programmes within them answer to a separate layer of statutory councils. Three authorities, overlapping in the public mind into one imagined national approver.

This RTI was filed with the UGC to establish the position on the record, in the specific context of Arunachal Pradesh. The reply, F.No.1-1151/2024(RIA/(CPP-I/PU), was issued in April 2024 by Speed Post, signed on 19 April 2024 by the Under Secretary and Public Information Officer. It is a single page. It does not name any university — a limitation worth stating at the outset, because nothing in it can be read as a finding about a particular institution.

The silence on the record

The first two questions are answered together, in one sentence: “No reply/response has been received from University and Higher Education State Government of Arunachal Pradesh.”

This is a modest-looking answer that does real work. Under the RTI Act, a public authority may hold no information because it never generated any — and here the reason it holds none is that neither the institution nor the state department wrote back. The UGC had asked. Nothing came.

For an investigator, a documented non-response is itself a finding. It is not evidence of wrongdoing; institutions miss correspondence for dull reasons. But it does establish that, as at April 2024, the central regulator had nothing on file from either the university or the state authority nominally supervising it.

Who actually approves an Indian degree

The reply's third answer sets out the architecture. “State Private Universities are established by the State Government and such universities function as per their Act/Statutes/Rules/Regulations or Policy of concerned State Government.” Complaints received by the UGC are forwarded to the higher education department of the state concerned for appropriate action.

The fourth answer is the one that should be quoted back at every prospectus that claims otherwise. “Courses/programmes are not approved by UGC.” State public and private universities established under Section 2(f) “are empowered to award general degree programme without the specific approval of UGC”.

Then the qualification that decides whether a qualification is usable: “the approval for running professional, technical and medical programmes are given by the respective Regulatory Council/Commission. Such programmes are governed by the norms of respective Regulatory Council/Commission.” The reply underlines the words professional, technical and medical in the original.

It closes by locating the paperwork: “The annual reports and other data is collected by the State Government.” Not by the UGC.

A note on the dates

One oddity should be recorded rather than smoothed over. The reply states it responds to “your RTI dated 24.04.2024 received in this section on 18.03.2024” — a receipt date more than a month before the stated date of the application, and a reply signed on 19 April, five days before the date the application is said to bear.

This is almost certainly a clerical error in one of the two dates. It is reproduced here as printed because an official record should be reported as it is, and because anyone matching this reply against their own file will want to know the discrepancy is in the original and not introduced here.

Key findings

“Courses/programmes are not approved by UGC.”

— University Grants Commission, RTI reply F.No.1-1151/2024(RIA/(CPP-I/PU), April 2024

What employers and students should know

Employers and screening agencies should stop treating “UGC approved” as a meaningful claim about a course. The relevant questions are narrower: is the awarding university listed under Section 2(f), and — if the qualification is professional, technical or medical — did the relevant statutory council approve that programme? A general BA from a listed state university needs no UGC course approval and never did. A professional qualification without its council's approval is a different matter entirely, whatever the prospectus said.

Students and parents should ask for the approval letter of the statutory council for any professional, technical or medical programme, by name and number, before paying a fee. The UGC will not have issued one, because it does not issue them. If an admissions office cannot produce the council's approval, that is the answer.

Anyone with a complaint about a state private university should note where it will end up. The UGC forwards complaints to the state higher education department. Writing to the state department directly, in parallel, saves months.