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| Thursday, June 26, 2008
Self-financing colleges agree to surrender 65 per cent of seats
- But they refuse to sign agreement with government
- It is a legal issue, says Jeppiaar
Chennai: Self-financing engineering colleges have agreed to
surrender 65 per cent of their seats to the government this
academic year, but they have refused to sign any agreement with
the government.
“This is a legal issue. Since this case is pending in
the Supreme Court, the parties cannot sign anything,”
said Jeppiaar, president of the Consortium of Self-Financing
Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu, addressing
mediapersons in Chennai on Wednesday.
The government and the managements of self-financing colleges
were to sign a seat-allocation agreement on June 26A total
of 69,731 seats will be available in the government quota
when counselling begins on July 3. This does not include new
colleges and new courses proposed for this year.
Mr. Jeppiaar said that according to the Madras High Court
judgment in September 2007, self-financing colleges could
retain control of all seats.
The government’s appeal against this ruling was still
pending in the Supreme Court, so no agreement could be signed
until the final judgement was given, he said.
As Anna University had fixed the date of counselling, parents
and students would be affected if there was no clarity on
the allocation of seats, he said. To ensure that the admission
proceedings were not disrupted, the self-financing colleges
have decided to follow last year’s seat allocation ratio
for this year as well.
This decision was also in response to the Chief Minister’s
request to the colleges.
Fee collection
The consortium has refused to accept the government’s
plan to collect first year fees through banks and planned
to convey this to the government on Wednesday evening.
In response to allegations of excess fee collection, the government
had announced that students would pay the prescribed fees
into accounts opened by self-financing colleges in select
nationalised banks. The bank challan would be submitted to
the college for the admission order.
However, Mr. Jeppiaar said that poor students would not even
be able to get loans to pay their fees without receiving their
admission orders first. This would result in such students
being unable to join their course.
“If the government goes through with this plan, 5,000
to 6,000 more seats will be left empty this year,” he
said.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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