Decision on fee sop, hike likely on Saturday

Decision on fee sop, hike likely on Saturday

The state government will take a final decision on the fee hike in engineering colleges, fee reimbursement and counselling dates on Saturday evening.

Cabinet sub-committee chairman Pitani Satyanarayana met chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy Friday evening and is reported to have informed him the gist of the discussions held between deputy chief minister and higher education minister Damodar Rajanarasimha and professional college managements.

“The government will take a decision in pursuance of the Supreme Court direction on fee hike and uniform fee structure on Saturday without imposing burden on BC students,” Satyanarayana said after the meeting.

Earlier in the day, around 97 per cent of the engineering college managements agreed to abide by whatever fee structure was decided by the government.

Their decision followed by a day-long meeting they held with Rajanarasimha.

The deputy chief minister is likely to summon the remaining three per cent college managements, who were adamant on the fee hike issue on Saturday.

Sources said that at the most, the government may hike the engineering fee by Rs 5,000 from the present Rs 31,000.

It may be recalled that the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (AFRC) had fixed the minimum fee for engineering colleges at Rs 50,200 for convenor quota seats.

If the fee is hiked as recommended, the government will have to shell out Rs 150 to Rs 200 crore more as fee reimbursement. But, the government brought the college managements under control as the latter fear that if they press the issue, the government take action against them for lack of infrastructure.

Though, the cabinet subcommittee was supposed to meet Kiran Kumar on Friday evening at the camp office, the meeting was postponed.

Meanwhile, ABVP activists tried to storm into the camp office Friday night demanding full fee reimbursement for BC students.

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