The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday granted interim stay on online admissions under the management quota in private engineering colleges.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and Justice N V Ramana was dealing with interim applications moved by various private engineering colleges seeking suspension of GO 66 and GO 67 issued by the state government in 2012, mandating that ‘B’ category seats (management quota) admissions in unaided non-minority and minority engineering colleges be done online.
The High Court in September 2012 stayed the GOs declaring that the GOs should not be applicable for the academic year 2012-13 as those were issued after commencement of the admission process by private engineering colleges.
The state government has recently announced that the GOs should be made applicable from this year and all the engineering colleges should fill their ‘B’ category seats through the portal of the State Council for Higher Education.
Arguing the case on behalf of the managements of private engineering colleges, senior counsels PP Rao and L Nageswara Rao contended that under the pretext of regulating admissions in category ‘B’, the entire process of admissions was sought to be subjected to government oversight.
They argued that the fundamental right of ‘autonomy’ guaranteed to the private educational institutions and recognised judicially by the courts was virtually neutralised by the state government.
Refuting the contentions of the petitioners, Additional advocate general KG Krishna Murthy said that in view of allegations against the college managements that they were collecting capitation fee from students taking admissions in ‘B’ category, the state government has introduced the online admissions system. He said that the government has nothing to do with the administration of the colleges and it was just providing a web portal to them to admit students in a transparent manner.
GOs were issued by framing guidelines based on the directions of the Supreme Court, he added.
While granting interim stay, the bench directed the additional advocate general to file a counter-affidavit on the plea within a week.
It is reliably learnt that the government has decided to file a vacate stay petition along with the counter affidavit.
