The ongoing tussle between college managements and the state government over the fee hike issue seems to get sharper delaying the date for engineering counselling further. Sources said the government is trying its best to announce the counselling date by Monday.
As another round of talks between the managements of engineering colleges and the government remained inconclusive on Saturday, the government has deferred its decision on the engineering counselling again, and decided to crack a whip on the managements for not adhering to the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) norms.
Though the cabinet sub-committee chairman Pitani Satyanarayana had announced on Friday night that they would take a final decision on engineering admissions, yet the deadlock continues.
It all started with the state government’s resistance to a fee hike proposed by the Fee Regulatory Committee (FRC) as it posed a burden on the exchequer to reimburse fee for backward classes (BC) students. The government rather proposed a nominal fee hike which was opposed by the college managements. A high-level committee was constituted to crack a whip on the managements.
Meanwhile, the chief minister discussed engineering-counselling dates and fee-hike issue with officials. Later, deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha also called on the chief minister. He said that he would meet officials again in the evening at his residence which was later cancelled. Members of the cabinet sub-committee were not available for comments.
Sources said that they held discussions at a secret venue to avoid incidents like storming into the CM’s camp office by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) students on Friday night.
Majority of engineering colleges do not have basic infrastructure to qualify for the fee hike. But, they have not been persuaded with the proposed fee hike.
According to sources, the government has been contemplating to formulate teams at district-level and regional-level to conduct inspections at professional colleges. The official sources said functioning of the proposed district and regional level committees will be supervised by the state level committee that will be headed by IAS officer SK Sinha and IPS officer Umesh Sharaf, AP Council of Higher Education and Technical Education Commissioner.