Derek Achong

A re­cip­i­ent of a na­tion­al bur­sary for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion has sued the State af­ter the bur­sary was with­drawn when he switched his field of study and ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion. 

Ajay Bachan, of Cara­pichaima, filed the con­sti­tu­tion­al case through his at­tor­neys led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, last week. 

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, in 2021, Bachan learned of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to re­duce na­tion­al an­nu­al schol­ar­ships for top-per­form­ing stu­dents to pro­vide bur­saries for stu­dents de­serv­ing of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for their ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. 

Al­though Bachan had a life­long dream of pur­su­ing a ca­reer in ac­count­ing, he de­cid­ed to pur­sue a Bach­e­lor’s De­gree in law (LLB) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus be­cause of his fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. The de­gree was fund­ed through the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme. 

His par­ents di­vorced when he was very young and his fa­ther, who he lives with, had to stop work­ing af­ter he de­vel­oped chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease. 

Two months af­ter start­ing his stud­ies at UWI, Bachan learned that he had been se­lect­ed for a bur­sary. Based on the award, he changed his course and in­sti­tu­tion of study to pur­sue an As­so­ci­a­tion of Cer­ti­fied Char­tered Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA) pro­gramme at the Stu­dent Ac­coun­tan­cy Cen­tre (SAC).

Bachan in­formed the min­istry of his de­ci­sion but al­most a year lat­er, he was in­formed that SAC was not an ac­cred­it­ed in­sti­tu­tion for the pur­pose of the bur­sary award. 

His lawyers claimed that he con­firmed that SAC was ac­cred­it­ed be­fore mak­ing the change.

“This le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion and un­der­stand­ing was re­in­forced by the fact that the Claimant was al­so aware of sev­er­al oth­er stu­dents at the SAC in­clud­ing one of his close friends who were pur­su­ing the AC­CA pro­gramme and re­ceiv­ing bur­sary pay­ments from the MoE un­der the Na­tion­al Bur­sary Award,” his lawyers said. 

Bachan had to re­ly on loans from rel­a­tives to write ex­am­i­na­tions while fol­low­ing up on the is­sue with the min­istry. While the SAC al­lowed him to at­tend class­es with­out pay­ing tu­ition as he was giv­en a bur­sary award, he was not al­lowed to con­tin­ue af­ter his first year. 

Bachan filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) seek­ing dis­clo­sure of the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria for bur­saries and was in­formed that it was the same for the GATE pro­gramme. He was al­so told that since the SAC was not an ap­proved in­sti­tu­tion un­der GATE, it was not sup­port­ed un­der the bur­sary pro­gramme. 

Not­ing that the min­istry al­so ad­mit­ted that sev­er­al stu­dents at the SAC had re­ceived bur­saries, Bachan’s lawyers said this demon­strat­ed that he had been sub­ject­ed to dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and un­fair treat­ment. 

Last May, Bachan was con­tact­ed by a min­istry of­fi­cial who told him that the po­si­tion had changed and he would re­ceive fund­ing be­cause the ac­cred­i­ta­tion is­sues with the SAC had been re­solved. Bachan filed the case af­ter he re­ceived no fur­ther re­sponse. 

His lawyers claimed that the sit­u­a­tion caused him dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience. 

“He felt vic­timised and dis­ap­point­ed, hurt and an­gry that his plight was be­ing ig­nored,” they said.

“He was re­duced from “hero to ze­ro” as he was re­duced to a mere spec­ta­tor and by­stander who was forced to look on in dis­ap­point­ment whilst his col­leagues pro­gressed with his own ed­u­ca­tion in lim­bo and stag­na­tion due to no fault of his own,” they added.

Through the law­suit, Bachan is seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to equal­i­ty be­fore the law, pro­tec­tion of the law, and equal­i­ty of treat­ment from a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty have been breached. He is al­so seek­ing mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion. 

Bachan is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Kent Sam­lal, Jared Ja­groo, Natasha Bis­ram, and Aasha Ram­lal. 

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Joan Charles on Feb­ru­ary 13.