The AP High Court on Friday directed the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee to notify Rs 50,200 as the fee for engineering colleges that have not given their consent affidavits or undertakings for the purpose.
Dealing with a petition submitted by the AP Private Engineering Colle-ges Management Associa-tion, Justice C.V. Nagar-juna Reddy directed the AFRC, subject to further orders, to notify the fee of Rs 50,200, which is the average fee for Category A and B seats for colleges in Annexure 1-C of the AFRC report for 2012-13.
The association was aggrieved by the AFRC fixing Rs 35,000 as the fee, on par with 481 engineering colleges shown in Annexure-I-B. That fee had been fixed for all remaining institutions that had not given consent affidavits or undertakings, and were listed in Annexure-I-C.
The association said that from the submissions made by the AFRC before the HC in petition filed by student Pooja Reddy, it was evident that the panel had proposed an increase from the previous average of Rs 50,200 for 74 institutions listed in Annexure-1- A.
The association contended that even though colleges have not given the affidavits on August 18, they are supposed to get the previous fee of Rs 50,200 that has been fixed for the period up to 2012-13.
It was argued that the fee of Rs 35,000 was “completely absurd” and does not emerge from any data available before the AFRC.
The suspense over the fee structure is likely to end on Saturday, when the state government is expected to issue orders prescribing the fee for engineering courses as recommended by the AFRC.
The state government has failed to initiate Eamcet engineering counselling so far due to lack of clarity on the fees issue.