Hyderabad: The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted permission to hold second phase of counselling for admissions into 174 private Engineering colleges, which had been de-recognised by the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad.
While granting the order, a two-member Bench comprising Justice Sudhansu Jyoti Mukhopadhaya and Justice S.A. Bobde made it clear that the permission was applicable only for Telangana state and would be limited only to students who had not joined any college till date.
The Bench ruled that the counselling process should be completed by November 14 and the academic year should begin the next day, November 15. The private engineering colleges will have to ensure that the first semester is completed as per All India Counselling for Technical Council’s schedule, with 527 hours of academic work.
The Bench also directed that the first semester should to be completed by January and second semester should commence from the second week of February 2015.
Cautioning that admissions would be subjected to the final results of inspection conducted by the JNTU, the Bench said that the varsity and the government were at liberty to utilise the services of experts from BITS Pilani and IIT in conducting the inspection.
The apex court also told the JNTU not to cancel recognitions on frivolous grounds and if the varsity found glaring lapses in maintaining facilities as per the norms of the AICTE and JNTU, it should bring the same to the notice of AICTE and the college management and then initiate process for de-recognition.
The Bench had directed that the inspection of all the petitioner colleges should be completed by December end, 2014.
Officials not expecting too many students
Though the Supreme Court has permitted counselling for the 174 petitioner engineering colleges in the Telangana State, officials are not expecting many students to turn up.
At the end of the first phase of Eamcet counselling in August, only about 4,000 students in TS and Andhra Pradesh couldn’t get seats of their choice. Officials also say that about 32,000 students in Telangana, who had qualified for Eamcet, didn’t turn up and they don’t expect many of them to appear for this phase of counselling.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that only seats in the earlier disqualified 174 engineering colleges would be available for counselling and students who had already got admissions would not be allowed to participate in this special phase of counselling.
Many students who didn’t get seats in the first phase of Eamcet counselling had later got admissions in other colleges through management quota and spot admissions.
However, students who had taken spot admissions will be able to participate in counselling since they were unofficial admissions without APSCHE’s permission.
“Spot admitted students can also participate, but those who are already admitted in some college can’t move since their current college won’t release their certificates,” a senior official said.
Dr Gautam Rao, chairman, Telangana Engineering and Professional Colleges Managements Associ-ation, said, “There may be about 10,000 students who will turn up, since there were many students who were waiting for the second phase of counselling.”
Meanwhile, APSCHE officials got a major breather as the apex court said counselling would only be for the 174 colleges. “Had it been for everyone, there would have been a huge trouble with spot admissions,” a senior APSCHE official said.
About 65,000 seats in colleges other than these still remain vacant.
