The AP High Court on Tuesday ordered that only those engineering colleges that have been paying salaries as per the 1996 payscales or the VIII Pay Revision Commission’s recommendations to their faculty were eligible to collect Rs 50,200 as fee for this academic year.
While disposing of two writ appeals by the state government and the Admission and Fee Regulation Committee, a division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice P.C. Ghose and Justice Vilas V. Afzulpurkar directed the college managements to submit their affidavits to the court by Wednesday stating that they had implemented the 1996 pay scales for their faculty.
The AFRC and the government had challenged a single-judge order directing them to notify Rs 50,200 as the fee for colleges that had not filed affidavits before the AFRC for fixing fees. Advocate-general A. Sudarshan Reddy told the court that the AFRC had fixed the fee based on the expenses disclosed by the colleges and despite the AFRC’s notification in accordance with the Supreme Court order, the petitioner colleges had not filed their affidavits before it.
Referring to the state government’s expenditure towards the fee reimbursement, the AG urged the court to stay the earlier order as it had been given prior to the notification of the state government. While refusing to stay the order, the acting Chief Justice appreciated the burden taken by the state government to reimburse the fee of the students.
Counsel for the colleges, Mr Niranjan Reddy, contended that the single judge had passed the order after perusing the Supreme Court’s direction. He said they (the colleges) had asked only for continuation of the existing fee of Rs 50,200 and not for an increase. But the AFRC had reduced the fee from Rs 50,200 to Rs 35,000. Quoting the Supreme Court’s direction, the Bench said that the single judge’s orders would be applicable to only those colleges that had been implementing the 1996 pay scales. The Bench added that colleges that were not implementing the pay scale could charge only Rs 35,000.
In a separate case, Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy made it clear on Tuesday that there could not be counselling in instalments and the authorities were bound to notify the total seats available in colleges across the state.