The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Representatives of unaided colleges meet to resolve outstanding issues

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 06, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Representatives of unaided colleges meet to resolve outstanding issues

K. Ramachandran

Private colleges do not want intervention "in admission policy and fee structure" The meeting wanted the Government not to insist on reservation for management quota seats and decided they would be filled as per merit in the qualifying examination

CHENNAI: Aspirants for B.E/B.Tech courses in Tamil Nadu can expect unaided professional colleges in the State to surrender up to 50 per cent of the seats in engineering colleges to the government quota next year.

At the same time, the colleges do not want the Government to go by the Supreme Court's judgment in the TMA Pai Foundation case so that there is "no intervention by the Government in unaided institutions with regard to admission policy, fee structure and administering of institutions."

Says Jeppiaar, president of the Consortium of Professional, Arts and Science College of Tamil Nadu: "Representatives of unaided colleges all over the country, who met in Hyderabad on October 1, resolved to present a memoranda to the Prime Minister and the Union Human Resource Development Minister, highlighting these and few other issues," .

Along with the chairman of another private college in Chennai, M.V. Mutharamalingam, Mr. Jeppiaar has been co-opted into an ad-hoc national committee of the newly-formed Federation of Unaided Professional Educational Institutions of India. The body will represent various management associations to discuss and resolve outstanding issues in running professional educational institutions with the aim of providing quality education. V. Malakonda Reddy from Andhra Pradesh chairs the body.

Mr. Jeppiaar said the Hyderabad meeting discussed the judgments of the Supreme Court in the October 2002 TMA Pai foundation case, the Islamic Academy case (August 2003) and the recent verdict given by a seven-member Bench on August 12, 2005.

"In the TMA Pai case the 11-member Bench had held that both minority and non-minority unaided institutions can legitimately claim unfettered fundamental right to choose students for admissions, which means the Government should not intervene in this matter," he told The Hindu .

The meeting wanted the Government not to insist on reservation for management quota seats and decided to filled them according to merit in the qualifying examination. They also wanted a 25 per cent NRI quota, he said.

Asked about the need for the common entrance test for management quota seats as in government quota seats, Mr. Jeppiaar said, "If that will be the norm, then the State-level associations should be allowed to conduct the CET. We will do it in a fair and transparent manner."

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