After facing scrutiny from state officials in Massachusetts, Amity University has cancelled its plan to buy two campuses in the US. Amity bought a campus in the US and was planning to buy two more.

Amity filed the paperwork in July proposing to buy the New England Institute of Art, located near Boston, and the Art Institute of New York City that are now owned by the Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp. The deal would have helped Amity gain a foothold in the US amid the chain’s global expansion.

However, Education Management Corp. officials said on Tuesday, “Amity has withdrawn from the proposed sale.” Anne Dean, a spokesperson for the corporation, would not say why the deal fell through. Officials from Amity that is based in New Delhi did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Approval for sale from state officials in Massachusetts would have required, however, some had said they were sceptical of the chain, saying it had no record of accomplishment in the US.

The state’s Department of Higher Education has sent a letter to the New England Institute of Art in September, asking what steps had been taken to ensure that Amity would provide quality education and whether the chain had the finances to support it.

The sale was proposed by the school after it had made plans to close following years of steep enrollment and revenue declines. In 2014, it enrolled 500 students, down from 1,600 in 2009.

Maura Healey, the state’s attorney general, said Tuesday that the sale was a “bad idea from the beginning,” describing Amity as a “foreign entity with no experience in American higher education.”

“These students deserve the education and careers that they were promised,” Healey said in a statement. “They don’t deserve to be treated like a source of income and shunted aside when they are no longer profitable.”

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