Amity had submitted in the High Court that even though it was recognized as per section 2(f) of the UGC Act with the power to award degrees under section 22 of the UGC Act, the non-inclusion of its name in the UGC List (which is a non-statutory list, i.e. not required under law) was creating problems for its students as some Universities were denying admissions for further education merely because the name of Amity University was not to be found on the UGC website.

Allowing the petition filed by Amity University, Hon’ble Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed observed, “It is beyond the pale of any debate that UGC is a public body and performs public functions and although it has discretion in maintaining or not maintaining a list of Universities, once the discretion in exercised, it must be reasonable and not arbitrary. It was open to the UGC not to maintain a list of Universities falling under section 2(f) of the UGC Act but having exercised the option of maintaining such a list, it is not open to UGC to pick and choose and arbitrarily and unreasonably deny inclusion of the petitioner’s name in the said list even though it falls within the definition of the word “university” given in section 2(f) of the UGC Act. This action on part of the UGC is detrimental to the interests of the petitioner as well as to the students of the petitioner…It is in these circumstances that I deem it proper to direct the UGC to include the name of the petitioner university in the list of universities, as per section 2(f) of the UGC Act that is being maintained by it on its website.”