The Telangana High Court on Thursday affirmed that the state government has the authority to decide on the increase of seats in engineering colleges. Hearing a plea by a private engineering college seeking the continuation of previous orders issued by a two-member bench regarding seat allotments for the current academic year, Justice K Lakshman made it clear that courts cannot act as appellate bodies in matters of educational policy unless there is clear evidence of procedural lapses or legal violations.
Several engineering colleges had challenged the government’s refusal to approve additional seats in B.Tech and BE programmes, including popular courses such as Computer Science, Data Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Communication, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Cyber Security.
They also contested the government’s move to merge certain programmes and alleged discrimination in granting permissions to select unaided institutions while denying others. Concluding that no clear evidence of procedural lapses or legal violations presented, the court dismissed the petitions filed by the private colleges.