BENGALURU: The State Department of Primary and Secondary Education has allegedly violated the election code of conduct and issued approval to set up 84 new private pre-university colleges in the state.
As per documents available, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) had rejected the proposal -- submitted by the state department to give permission for setting up of the new colleges -- as the election code of conduct was in place between May 15 to June 12 for elections of Members for Legislative Council (MLC). Despite the proposal being rejected at the director level, it was sent to the secretariat level.
The file communication between the department and State Election Commission shows that the proposal was rejected by the CEO on May 29. “The proposal for schools and PU colleges was rejected in the same file,” confirmed a senior official of the department. Speaking about it, Arun Shahapur, MLC said, “I was the first one to raise this issue. It’s not just a case of violation of the code of conduct, but also of irregularities. We demand a high-level inquiry into this process of approval given... at the principal secretary level.”
Meanwhile, managements of the PU colleges that received letters of approval confirmed that they had received them when the code of conduct was in place.Shahpur also alleged that files about these colleges had been rejected by the Director for Pre-University Education Department, but these were later called for by the Principal Secretary of the Department and given approval. “An order issued by the government in February 2018 clearly gives powers to the Director of PUE department to decide on these matters... These colleges were rejected owing to lack of infrastructure and because they were within 3-km radius of the government PU college,” said Shahapur.
This new norm of denying permission to private PU colleges was brought because there was a rise in number of private colleges in the state, and this had affected enrolment of PU students at state government colleges.
