The Karnataka High Court has asked Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) to take action against the erring nursing colleges in the state. The court has warned that it would not allow nursing schools and colleges to operate without proper infrastructure from the next academic year. The court directed RGUHS to proceed with the action including disaffiliation against such colleges.

Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) on the state's poor infrastructure in nursing institutes, the court inclined to order a CBI probe into the impropriety in granting of recognition to several institutions by the state government.

The court had earlier prohibited the Karnataka State Nursing Council and RGUHS from approving admissions to these nursing schools relying upon the report of a task force on paramedical education headed by Dr CM Gurumurthy. Later following the management's assurance on improving the infrastructure, the court had permitted provisional approval of admission.

During the hearing, RGUHS counsel pointed that that out of the 180 nursing colleges blacklisted by the Dr Gurumurthy task force, 27 were hopeless while 153 could be given time to rectify their deficiencies and 135 required up to 70 per cent of facilities to be upgraded or moved into new facilities.

The court adjourned the matter to March 22, 2007 and directed the state nursing council registrar to be present on the occasion.

Karnataka chief justice Cyriac Joseph added that the order directing the provisional approval for admissions was an 'order at gun-point'. "College managements have shown students as hostages and we had to allow the colleges to run", he said adding, "The admissions would not be allowed for the next academic year".