07-08-2026 Item No.8 Subrata Bhattacharyya AR(C) IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA Constitutional Writ Jurisdiction Appellate Side WPA No.20301 of 2026 Yeaqub Ali B.Ed College -vs- The State of West Bengal & Ors. Mr. Amitabrata Roy, adv. Mr. Arkadipta Sengupta, adv. Mr. Tirthankar Dey, adv. Ms. Deboleena Ghosh, adv. Ms. Ria Naskar, adv. Ms. Ankita Ghosh, adv. …for the petitioner Mr. Madhu Jana, adv. Mr. Sunajit Singh, adv. …for the State Mr. Subir Sanyal, sr. adv. Mr. Ratul Biswas, adv. Mr. Kaushik Chowdhury, adv. …for the Board 1. The petitioner is a college imparting D.El.Ed. course education. The writ petition has been filed praying, inter alia, for a direction upon the West Bengal Board of Primary Education to approve the prayer of the petitioner in consonance with the decision adopted by the Eastern Regional Committee, National Council for Teacher Education in its meeting held on January 1, 2026. 2. The decision taken by the Eastern Regional Committee on January 16, 2026 records as follows: “The original file of the institution along with other related documents, NCTE Act, 1993, NCTE Rules, Regulations, SOP, representation received from the institution for changing of their medium of instructions, Regulations, guidelines issued from time to time were placed before the Eastern Regional Committee and the Committee observed the following: The institution has submitted a letter dated 24.12.2025 with a request for change their medium of instructions from Bengali medium to Urdu medium in respect of 50 (fifty) intake out of intake of 100 with regard to D.El.Ed. Course. In view of the above, the Committee decided that the change of medium of instructions by the Teacher Education Institution offering the D.El.Ed. course is a purely State Policy. However, Directorate of School Education may pursue the matter as per the policy provision/extant of law/regulation with the concerned affiliating body in order to change the medium of instructions of the institution which fulfil the need of the School Education System of the particular State. Letter be issued to the Directorate of School Education and the concerned affiliating body accordingly. 3. The decision taken by the Committee was communicated to the Secretary of the Board of Primary Education for further action. 4. It appears that till date there is no decision on the part of the State to permit the change of medium of instructions from Bengali to Urdu as requested by the college. 5. As the NCTE has opined that change of medium of instructions is purely State policy, in the absence of any policy of the State, no order can be passed 2 in favour of the college. 6. In view of the above, no relief can be given to the petitioner. The writ petition fails and is hereby dismissed. 7. The Secretary of the School Education Department, however, is directed to conduct a thorough inspection to ascertain as to whether the institute is at all functional or not. 8. If the institute is not running as per the laws of the land, necessary steps shall be taken by the Secretary of the School Education Department to deal with the same in accordance with law. 9. All parties are to act on the server copy of this order duly downloaded from the official website of this Court. 10. Certified server copy of this order, if applied for, shall be made available to the parties. [Amrita Sinha, J] 3 4