JOIN USRaids delay TN college admission
At least 45 self-financing engineering colleges, most of them in Tamil Nadu, were raided by teams of the I-T Department’s Investigation wing, after the authorities received complaints regarding collection of capitation fees.
From two highly influential colleges alone, one on the outskirts of Chennai and another at Coimbatore, I-T sleuths seized over Rs 20 crore of unaccounted cash. There were evidences to link these to the receipt of capitation fee in recent weeks, sources said.
In one private engineering college in Coimbatore, the officials stumbled on a bank account in which “unaccounted capitation fees” to the extent of Rs 7.5 crore had been deposited. This was in addition to about Rs 1.5 crore cash in hand the college had in possession when the raid was conducted.
The present rate for top engineering courses in highly rated engineering colleges this year ranged from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per seat, sources pointed out. This had generated a huge pile of unaccounted cash in several of them.
“Despite my daughter securing 88 per cent in the CBSE exams, I had to pay a hefty donation,” the mother of a girl said, without wanting to be named.
Simultaneously, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s Anti-Corruption Branch here searched the premises of a private medical college run by a religious trust headed by Swami Bangaru Adigalar in Melamaruvathur, about 50 km from Chennai, sources said.
A CBI source confirmed that a case against the medical college management has been registered for procedural irregularities in getting recognition for the institution by being hand in glove with the medical council of India’s former chairman Ketan Desai.
Some of the private engineering colleges and deemed universities that were raided included Dr MGR University in Chennai, founded by former AIADMK MP A C Shanmugham, St Peter’s Engineering College in suburban Avadi, the Adiparasakthi Trust group of Institutions, and the Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore.