HYDERABAD: In a relief to several private engineering, polytechnic and postgraduate colleges situated in and around Hyderabad, a division bench of the High Court dismissed a batch of appeals filed by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) against an order of a single judge who had permitted the petitioner colleges to conduct admissions for the academic year 2017-18.
The bench, however, permitted the AICTE to conduct physical inspection of these colleges and submit a report to the court. The bench of justice V Ramasubramanian and justice N Balayogi gave this order on a batch appeals filed by AICTE seeking setting aside of an interim order of a single judge who granted interim relief to the petitioner colleges belonging to Aurora, Church, Tarakarama, Ravi Rishi and Sampati educational societies.
The petitioner institutions had earlier questioned the decision of AICTE to reduce the intake of students by 50 per cent by some of the colleges and denying approval to some other colleges for the academic year 2017-18. On the other hand, the AICTE refused to grant approval and reduced the intake of the students to these colleges on the ground of not having the approval for construction of buildings and that some of the colleges have allegedly produced the forged documents with regard to building approvals.
A single judge had suspended the AICTE’s order reducing the intake of students. The judge directed the AICTE to treat the petitioner institutions as validly approved with the sanctioned intake for all the courses for 2017-18. The council filed appeals. The bench, while dismissing the appeals of AICTE, referred the batch of petitions of the educational institutions to the single judge for final hearing.