Students pursuing B.Tech courses in top engineering colleges in the state will have to shell out more from the coming academic year 2012-13.
If the new proposals of the state government come into force, the fees of the top 50 colleges will be doubled. However, the fees in second-grade and lower-rung colleges are likely to come down.
The government has drafted new fee fixation proposals for engineering courses, wherein there will be uniform fees for convener and management quota seats, which will be decided college-wise based on the quality of faculty and infrastructure they offer. The audited accounts submitted by the managements also will be considered.
At present, the government is implementing a variable fee structure by categorising seats as category-A (convener quota 70 per cent seats) and category-B (management quota 30 per cent seats). The fee in convener quota is Rs 31,000 per annum, while the management quota fee is Rs 95,000 per annum. This system has been in force for more than a decade.
However, the managements of engineering colleges had challenged in the AP High Court the categorisation of seats and the variable fee structure fixed by the government. The court had, in turn, scrapped the existing system and had asked the government to fix a uniform fee for seats last October.
However, the state government had filed a SLP in the Supreme Court against the High Court orders in December 2011.
The Apex Court on January 7 this year had stayed the HC orders and had asked the government to submit a report by January 23 on the procedure to be adopted for fixing fees in the coming year. The government had drafted the report in a week.
