The Government of India has mandated that for the purpose of employment and higher studies, all degrees offered by distance learning mode are equivalent to the ones offered under the regular stream. But the institute has to be approved by the Distance Education Council.

In the case of professional degrees, only those with less than 40% course content in practicals could be offered under the DL mode. So, you cannot earn a BTech under DL mode. Also, all other professional degrees offered in DL mode must be approved by the Joint UGC-AICTE-DEC committee. So yes, a BA (H) from School of Open Learning is completely valid degree.