NEW DELHI, May 5 -- The Patna High Court has directed the Bihar education department not to take coercive action against state universities and their officials until further notice. This includes withholding salaries of Vice-Chancellors (VCs) and freezing accounts of the institutions, which the court ordered to be "kept in abeyance".

Justice Anjani Kumar Sharan's bench heard a series of petitions filed by various state-run universities challenging the state government's recent directive to freeze the bank accounts of these institutions and withhold salaries of VCs for non-attendance at a meeting of the education department.

"All the impugned orders whereby salary of university officials have been withheld and all the accounts of univers...