The consortium of engineering and professional colleges’ managements association of AP, which represents most professional colleges in the state, has asked managements of all engineering colleges to voluntarily surrender excess seats over 420 from the coming academic year (2013-14) to improve the quality of engineering education.
It threatened to probe the colleges’ faculty and infrastructure facilities and report to the government if their intake exceeded 420 seats.
The state Cabinet on Thursday passed a resolution asking AICTE not to allow new engineering colleges in the state besides fixing an upper ceiling of 420 seats in each college from 2013-14. The Cabinet, however, asked AICTE to allow up to 540 seats in those colleges which are accredited by respective agencies.
“Some colleges came forward voluntarily to surrender excess seats over 420. We urge all colleges to do the same. If any college continues to function over the intake of 420, we will gather all their details pertaining to faculty and infrastructure to verify whether they are eligible for additional intake. We will expose them before the government and the respective regulatory agencies,” said Nimmatoori Ramesh, chairman of the consortium. His comments were echoed by Nova Krishna Rao, president, and K. Sunil Kumar, general secretary of the consortium.
Speaking to reporters here, they said out of 685 private engineering colleges in the state, nearly 500 had intakes over 420.
“Some colleges have seats up to 1,000, thanks to the indiscriminate approvals given by AICTE. There was an upper ceiling of 420 seats till 2008, but AICTE started approving any number of seats after that,” Mr Ramesh said.
The three also alleged that when the AICTE started online processing of applications for the purpose, the college managements submitted fake details of existing faculty and infrastructure, based on which nod is given for enhancing intake.