Permissions to colleges only after thorough inspection of facilities

Hyderabad: Ever since the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has taken the reins of administration, the government is on an inspections spree. Even before inspections in the private engineering colleges concluded for granting affiliation, the government has decided to inspect the polytechnic colleges to review the facilities, according to official sources.

The government has made it clear that without conducting inspections, it would not issue governmental order for admissions. Earlier, permission from All India Council for Technical Education and a Government Order were sufficient making colleges eligible for admissions.

Over the years, the inspections were done in the middle of the academic year and GO was issued. As the inspections were held amid the academic year, it gave room for private polytechnic colleges to thrive as the students’ future would be at stake if affiliation was withdrawn. Though colleges gave affidavits stating that they would improve facilities, they failed to do so. Hence from this year, the government decided to grant affiliation before the admission process began.

In this regard, Principal Secretary to the government Ranjeev R Acharya also issued a memo to Technical Education Department questioning whether the State Board of Technical Education and Training was doing any inspections for affiliations. She made it clear that based on the inspections, the government would issue the GO.  

There were about 243 polytechnic college including government, private and second shift colleges in the State. Of the total, 160 polytechnic colleges are functioning in the second shift in engineering colleges. The Technical Education officials said majority of the second shift colleges were running in the colleges that were disaffiliated by the JNTU-H for lack of facilities.

In the academic year 2014-2015, of 58,944 convener seats in all the colleges, 34,171 seats were filled and about 24,773 remained vacant after final phase of counselling. According a senior official of Technical Education, the move by the government comes in the wake of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University-Hyderabad inspecting the engineering colleges.

There would not be any harm to students if the government withdraws the affiliation, as the number of seats is more in contrast to the students available, sources said.