HYDERABAD: After making the affiliation process more stringent by linking it to common service fee dues, the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University-Hyderabad (JNTU-H) has fixed April 4 as the deadline for clearing the dues by the managements of affiliated engineering colleges. In a circular issued last week, the university has directed all its affiliated colleges to clear their dues and warned that affiliation will not be granted to colleges that do not pay the affiliation fee and common service fee dues by April 4. The dues run into a huge amount of over `50 crore.
Engineering college managements, which have criticised the new affiliation regulations, have flayed the university and termed the ultimatum as unfair. “How can JNTU-H fix a deadline for payment of dues when the government has not released the reimbursement amount? If dues are pending, it is because the reimbursement is pending,” said Goutham Rao, president of Telangana Engineering College Managements Association.
The managements have asked the JNTU to collect just the affiliation fee and the common service fee due for 2015-16. “Instead of asking us to clear the fees at one go, we have recommended that it can be done in phases. That will also give the government time to reimburse the scholarships,” said Rao. So far, no college has received reimbursement for 2017-18. Moreover, some colleges still await the amount for the 2014-15 year. Rao said that linking college affiliation process to common service fee dues, biometric attendance and academic performance of students was unfortunate.
Speaking to Express, N Yadaiah, registrar, said payment of affiliation fee was not linked to fee reimbursement. “ It is the fee for processing application for affiliation for next year. It is not appropriate for them to say this,” he said and added that extension of the April 4 deadline may not be possible because, even if it’s done, there was no guarantee that the government would have disbursed the scholarship amount by then. On January 17 the JNTU-H had released a booklet on the procedures and regulations for college affiliation for the 2018-19 academic year and it received a lot of criticism from engineering college managements.