Centre wants effective grievance redressal by technical institutes

The Centre has tightened the noose around   technical institutes, telling them that it will now look at the effectiveness of their grievance redressal mechanism as a necessary prerequisite for annual renewal or fresh grant of the approval to their programmes.

It has directed all technical institutes to accept all grievances, including those from their students, teachers and other staff on their web portal online and send a monthly status report to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Those institutes which have still not created any webpage for the redressal of grievances must do it now and link the said page with the websites of their respective institutions, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has said.

The technical education regulator, issued a circular last week, directing the heads of all engineering and other technical institutes offering various professional programmes to comply with the guidelines for “effective” redressal of grievances at their level.

“The ministry has emphasised that there is a need of structured mechanism for online registration as well as disposal of grievances of students, faculty and other stakeholders in every institution,” AICTE chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe stated in the circular.

‘Poor mechanism’

The move comes after it was observed that a large number of grievances against technical institutes were posted on a central government’s online public grievance redressal portal from different parts of the country despite the fact that it was mandatory for all higher educational institutions to put into place an effective grievance redressal mechanism.

“The complaints reaching at pg.portal of the central government are clear indication of a poor grievance redressal mechanism at level of the institutes. Why would anyone seek redressal of grievances on the portal when the mechanism created at the level of institutes is satisfactory to the petitioners,” an HRD Ministry official told DH.

The effectiveness of the technical institutes’ grievance redressal mechanism has been linked to the evaluation of their performance so that they address the problems of students, teachers and other stakeholders, ‘instead of just burying them under the carpet,’ the official added.

“The council will take into account the performance of the grievance redressal mechanism at the time of renewal of their (institutes’) permission or approval every year,” the AICTE chairman told the technical institutes.