The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Bill on autonomy to engineering colleges passed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 05, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Bill on autonomy to engineering colleges passed

Special Correspondent

Opposition demands withdrawal of Bill, stages walk-out

BANGALORE: Engineering colleges in the State, government or private, will be eligible for autonomy as in the case of medical and first grade degree colleges with the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday empowering the Visvesvaraya Technology University to grant autonomy to the applicant engineering colleges.

At the end of a daylong session, the Assembly adopted the Visvesvaraya Technological University (Amendment) Bill 2006 amid a walkout by the Opposition led by Leader of the Opposition N. Dharam Singh.

Minister for Higher Education D.H. Shankaramurthy, who piloted the Bill, said that University Act does not have any provision for according autonomy to the colleges affiliated to it unlike in the case of the Karnataka State University Act 2000, under which the university concerned could grant autonomy to any college or even the department of a college with the prior permission of the government.

Even as the Opposition demanded that the Bill be withdrawn, the Minister said it was only a lacuna in the VTU Act which was being filled. All engineering colleges in the State were governed under the Karnataka State Universities Act until the VTU Act came into effect on October 17, 1994. The World Bank has also insisted that institutions selected for its projects should be autonomous.

Senior Congress member M. Mallikarjuna Kharge and Mr. Dharam Singh said it would have been appropriate if the Government had total control over all engineering colleges. By securing autonomy, such colleges would be independent of the government and over a period of time would not care even to implement the directions of the government, they said.

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