Eamcet counselling deferred again

HYDERABAD: Following the Hyderabad high court’s directive to Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H) to allow 80 private engineering colleges to take part in the web counselling that was scheduled to start on Wednesday, the university decided to postpone the counselling process and the new date is likely to be announced in a day or two.
“The Tuesday’s high court ruling do not provide us with conducive methods for the conduct of the counselling sessions, which is why we have put it off by a few days,” said Ramana Rao, registrar, JNTU-H.
A late night press release by the JNTU said: “The university has decided to go for an appeal against the HC’s directive to include the 80 private engineering colleges in the counselling process. A request has been made by the university to the advocate general to take necessary steps for filing an appeal. Until appropriate order is passed by the division bench of the high court, the counselling process will be deferred.”
Officials of Telangana State Council for Higher Education said the new counselling schedule will be announced on Wednesday evening.
Earlier in the day, troviding relief to nearly 80 private engineering colleges in Telangana, the high court on directed Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H) to accord provisional affiliation to colleges functioning as approved institutions for the last three years.
The court’s directive will see the number of engineering seats going up by almost one lakh in the state giving relief to thousands of students, officials said.
The HC said that all such colleges, which are affiliated to JNTU-H, must be allowed to participate in the web counselling process. Before the engineering colleges moved the high court, 76,635 seats were available for counselling. Now, over 40,000 seats will be added, giving more options to students in the first phase of counselling which is set to begin on Wednesday.
While 90,556 students qualified in Eamcet this year, more than 25,000 seats are likely to remain vacant. Last year, almost 30,000 seats remained vacant after the first phase of counselling.
Justice Rao was dealing with scores of petitions filed by several engineering colleges which were aggrieved at JNTU-H’s decision to cancel their affiliation. Agreeing with the contentions raised by S Niranjan Reddy, the counsel for engineering colleges, the judge made it clear that JNTU-H cannot impose the same conditions that were already imposed by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Consequently, all such regulations imposed by JNTU-H which are overlapping with those fixed by AICTE were declared invalid.
Dealing with the varsity’s charge that these colleges lack infrastructural facilities, the judge directed AICTE to depute a team of experts to inspect the institutions. The team has to submit its report to JNTU, following which the latter has to pass a final order on the issue of according (or otherwise) affiliation to these colleges by July 28.