Hyderabad: The strong private professional colleges’ lobby has started exerting pressure on the Telangana government to relax norms for engineering admissions, set to commence soon.
Managements are meeting ministers and officials regularly in the Secretariat seeking relaxation of norms to allow students from other states to take admissions in merit quota.
At present, such students are allowed to take admissions only in the management quota.
Managements are even trying to relax norms for NRI-quota admissions by incorporating “NRI-sponsored quota”, wherein local students can be given admissions based on sponsorship letter offered by NRIs.
Colleges had misused this NRI- sponsored quota earlier by providing fake NRI sponsorship letters on their own to students and resorted to sale of seats for which there is a huge demand.
Some managements are even asking the government to bring them out of the purview of Eamcet and allow them to conduct their own entrance tests and counselling.
It remains to be seen whether the T-government will concede to their demands, which would affect the prospects of meritorious students from socially and economically weaker sections, who cannot afford to pay the huge amounts demanded by managements of the better colleges.
College owners close to the TRS high command, who had secured party tickets or had worked for the party in the recent polls, are playing a crucial role in lobbying with the government for relaxations.
They were successful in taking up these issues to Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who asked officials of the Higher Education department on Tuesday to examine them and come up with a report soon.
Some colleges are already admitting students from other states and countries in the “merit quota” against the norms and seeking relaxation from the government every year on grounds of “protecting the interests of students”.
