The government has decided to issue a revised order on management quota admissions in engineering colleges. The fresh GO is expected to be issued on Thursday. The GO issued on Tuesday created a flutter as it had no mention of making management quota admissions online to check the sale of seats and to ensure merit and transparency in the admissions process. This triggered severe resentment among students and parents.
The government is also planning to issue a revised GO making it mandatory for students to clear at least half of the total papers to become eligible for fee reimbursement in subsequent years. Student organisations had also opposed the earlier GO, alleging that the government had ignored online admissions, bowing to pressure from top engineering colleges, which sell seats by collecting donations of up to Rs 15 lakh.
Following the uproar, Deputy CM Damodar Raja Narasimha discussed the issue with Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on Wednesday, and it was decided to issue a “revised GO” by duly incorporating a provision for “online admissions” for management quota. However, officials in the higher education department maintained that the GO issued on Tuesday was aimed at tightening the norms to fill management quota seats by duly following merit and the omission of “online admissions” in those orders was only “technical”. They said earlier orders had asked colleges to post online admission details on their website.