AICTE receives 79 new applications from State

Chennai: Seventy-nine new applications from the State have been received by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for approval to start new institutions. Of these 48 are for engineering colleges, 21 for management colleges, nine for integrated campuses and one for a school of architecture.

P. Mannar Jawahar, southern region chairman, AICTE, said a meeting would be held on March 27 to finalise the formalities for scrutinising committees. The process of approval was expected to be completed by May-end.

The State government had earlier indicated its opposition to new engineering colleges being started when a number of seats went unfilled in the previous year's counselling process. But, a senior government official said they would not intervene in the applications process of the AICTE this year as it was at an advanced stage.

In another issue, over 100 students of postgraduate programmes in various colleges affiliated to Anna University were found to have taken up full-time courses while they were working in various capacities.

After the students represented to the Vice-Chancellor, a committee was formed and found that attendance registers were falsified by certain colleges.

Many students who were working as lecturers in engineering colleges submitted their resignations and requested the university to allow them to complete their degrees.

Dr. Jawahar said the university had decided not to disqualify the students. They would be asked to complete the six semester part-time ME programme instead of the four semester full-time programme and were being let off without any other penalty.

Courtesy: The Hindu