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| Monday, April 21, 2008
Colleges call truce over fees, seats
CHENNAI: Aspiring engineers in Tamil Nadu can perhaps heave
a sigh of relief. Most of them may not have to pay high fees
this year. Besides they can look forward to a large number of
seats continuing to remain under government quota.
In a surprising turnaround, the managements of self-financing
engineering colleges in the state on Sunday decided to call
a truce over the issues of surrendering BE/B.Tech seats to the
government quota and fixing of fee structures for the academic
year 2008-09.
The self-financing non-minority colleges have now more or
less come around to the arrangement of surrendering 65% of
the total seats to the government. Unaided minority colleges,
on the other hand, will surrender 50% seats as was the case
last year.
Earlier, the colleges were toying with the idea of not surrendering
many seats by citing a Supreme Court verdict that granted
them unfettered rights in administration.
It is learnt that representatives of around 85 to 90 private
colleges who met on the outskirts of Chennai to decide on
the contentious issue, which was proving to be a political
challenge to the ruling DMK, softened their stand under pressure
from quarters close to the government.
"It was indicated to us that if colleges refused to stick
to the existing admission formula, then the government could
take action against institutions that violated Section 37-B
of the Tamil Nadu Land Reforms Act. Many college owners presumably
did not want to risk this and agreed to do the government’s
bidding," a representative of a college told the Times
Of India.
Section 37-B states that if any public trust, created after
March 1, 1972, desires to hold or acquire any land for establishing
any educational institution or hospital or expanding any educational
institution, it should make an application to the government
for permission.
It further states that acquisition of property by a public
trust without prior permission under Section 37-B is invalid.
Many colleges have come up on vast extent of land without obtaining
such permission.
In fact, a few years ago the then education minister M Thambidurai
was dropped from the ministry after he allegedly obtained exemption
under Section 37-B for his college through backdoor means.
"On Sunday, when the floor was thrown open, some college
owners first pointed out that it would be impossible to survive
by collecting the existing State-fixed fees of Rs 32,500 per
year for government quota students as institutions were required
to effect a 30 % increase in pay for faculty under the sixth
pay commission.
Also, the court had permitted them to fill up all seats on their
own.
Later, an office-bearer of the Consortium of Self-Financing
Arts, Science and Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu hinted
that it would be unwise to antagonise the government.
Everyone got the message," a college owner said. Now the
colleges have decided to request the government to at least
allow them to fill up the management quota seats without a ceiling
on the fee structure.
They also hope that the government would relax the eligibility
norms and permit students with a mere pass in Plus-Two to join
BE/B.Tech courses.
At present only SC/ST students can join engineering colleges
with a mere pass in Plus-Two, while students belonging to the
MBC, BC and OC categories require a minimum aggregate score
of 50%, 55% and 60% respectively for admissions.
Courtesy: Times of India
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