After getting the government to agree to its dem-ands on regular BTech ad-missions, the Kerala Self-Financing Enginee-ring College Management Assoc-iation is on the verge of doing the same with rega-rd to BTech lateral entry of engineering diploma hol-ders, in the second year.
The association the other day met chief minister Oommen Chandy who asked the Higher Educati-on Department and senior officials of the Departm-ent of Technical Educati-on, to look into the issue and do the needful.
The issue arose last year with some of the varsities in the state refusing to fill the vacant BTech seats from the lateral entry applicants.
Though the SF colleges used to fill such vacancies from lateral entry applicants, the universities did not raise objections, as these seats were limited in number.
“The MG Uni-versity made it a big issue and last year alone almost 8,000 seats fell vacant in SF engineering colleges.
So if the varsities continue with their objection we will find it difficult to fill our seats and hence we approached the government to remove the objection and the chief minister has been positive about it,” said T.A Vijayan, secretary of KSFECMA.
It’s understood that the officials prevented the government from incorporating the lateral entry admission clause in this year’s agreement of KSFECMA with the government and hence the issue had to be separately dealt with. Now a government order has to be issued in this regard.
Government has apparently approved taking can-didates without zero and minus marks in the entra-nce for the BTech lateral entry admission.
A total of 6,000 students figure in the list published after lateral entry and the whole lot will now find their way to the colleges, leaving just 2,000 odd seats remaining vacant in the SF colleges.