The Hindu : Front Page : Self-financing colleges to surrender 65 per cent of seats

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Thursday, Jun 26, 2008
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Self-financing colleges to surrender 65 per cent of seats

Special Correspondent

But refuse to sign any agreement with the government

CHENNAI: Self-financing engineering colleges have agreed to surrender 65 per cent of their seats to the government this academic year, but have refused to sign any agreement with the government.

“This is a legal issue. Since this case is pending in the Supreme Court, the parties cannot sign anything,” said Jeppiaar, president of the Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu, addressing mediapersons in Chennai on Wednesday.

The government and the managements of self-financing colleges were to sign a seat-allocation agreement on June 26. A total of 69,731 seats will be available in the government quota. This does not include new colleges and new courses proposed for this year.

Mr. Jeppiaar said that according to the Madras High Court judgment in September 2007, self-financing colleges could retain control of all seats. The government’s appeal against this ruling was still pending in the Supreme Court, so no agreement could be signed until the final judgment was given, he said.

As Anna University had fixed the date of counselling, parents and students would be affected if there was no clarity on the allocation of seats, he said. To ensure that the admission proceedings were not disrupted, the self-financing colleges have decided to follow last year’s seat allocation ratio for this year as well. This decision was also in response to the Chief Minister’s request to the colleges.

The consortium has refused to accept the government’s plan to collect first year fees through banks and planned to convey this to the government on Wednesday evening.

In response to allegations of excess fee collection, the government had announced that students would pay the prescribed fees into accounts opened by self-financing colleges in select nationalised banks. The bank challan would be submitted to the college for the admission order.

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