The Department of Technical Education (DTE) on Monday stalled the admission approval process of engineering colleges until the State government clarified on the issue of “excess fee.”
DTE Director H U Talawar has written to Principal Secretary of Higher Education pointing out that the admission approval cannot see any progress until the government issues official directions on what to consider as extra fee. This comes in the light of government's warning to private managements about strict action against collection of additional fee from students.
The department had scheduled the approval of admissions from Monday. Colleges are required to submit all the details of every student admitted in their college.
The admissions of students will be approved only after DTE is convinced that every student meets the eligibility criteria. This year, the State government had directed all colleges to upload details of fee collected on their respective websites and submit the same to DTE.
The DTE, in turn, was required to host it on its website. It was informed that the department would not approve the seats of colleges until the details of fee was submitted. Only 97 colleges have given the details as on September 2. Moreover, every college had uploaded details of varying amount of excess fee collected from students.
Taking objection to this, Talawar said they are not sure as to what constitutes excess fees, in the absence of government directions in this regard. “Which fee is excess? What is the limit to the amount that could be collected? Unless the government gives us a clear definition, we will not be able to approve the admissions,” he said.
Confusion
The department has also highlighted that there is no clarity on whether to approve admissions of seats that were vacant after KEA counselling, where in the colleges considered the vacant seats as being transferred to management. “In 2012, KEA had asked managements to fill the vacant seats. This year, no such directions have been given. Should the department go ahead with approval of such seats or not” the letter written to the principal secretary stated.
Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges Association (KUPECA) Panduranga Setty said the DTE's query was “ridiculous”. As per the consensual agreement, all seats vacant after July 27 belong to the managements. However, the managements cooperated with the government and allowed counselling for government seats after the date.
“Moreover, if managements do not fill these seats, who will? Those seats will remain unused,” said Setty.
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