AICTE puts Govt. in a spot, but court helps

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JULY 14. The decision of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to grant approval for a phenomenal 55 new engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu this year has put the State Government in a spot.

However, getting over the crisis with help in the form of a High Court interim direction, the Government today decided to include 17 of the new colleges (which approached the Court) in the single window admission list.

These colleges will be given a distinct `code number' to signify to students attending counselling, that seats in these institutions are available but the colleges have not yet got university affiliation.

When the process for engineering admissions began, Tamil Nadu had 155 colleges covered under the single window admission system with about 34,000 seats. The AICTE allowed most of these colleges to increase the sanctioned strength, bringing the total to 38,500.

Suddenly, the AICTE decided to grant approval to 55 more new institutions, though, the Government had issued no objection certificates to less than a dozen new colleges. For some inexplicable reason, Government officials did not take a firm stance on the AICTE's approval of new colleges without the `NoC' from the State Government.

The inclusion of 17 more colleges under the single window pool will increase the tally of available seats to over 41,000. Nearly, 8,000 seats have already been filled up during the counselling which began on July 7.

The new institutions-half of them coming under the jurisdiction of the Madras University-applied for affiliation for this year itself. The Government has issued guidelines to the universities for expediting the affiliation process.

The Madras University Syndicate, which met on Friday, took a policy decision to expedite the affiliation of the institutions. The Director of Technical Education (DTE), university sources said, has been asked to nominate five experts who will be part of the team to inspect the various colleges and give its recommendations on their applications for affiliation. The Government has also directed the universities to include a superintending engineer of the PWD as part of the inspection committee to assess the infrastructure available in the colleges.

The inspection teams are expected to finish their work before July 25 and the universities will decide on grant of affiliation in the next few days. As per the present schedule, counselling is expected to be completed by July 31.

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Section  : Southern States
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