"Since a new procedure for approving and regulating the engineering colleges has been employed this year, its complexities were not understood properly and everything was hushed up," says Dr K Rajanikanth, Principal, MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology.

Stressing that AICTE's new online system was "not designed properly," Dr Rajanikanth said that many colleges had failed to log into the account initially.

"The AICTE approves hundreds of colleges every year, the online system should have been user friendly. But, in many cases, the server broke down whenever the colleges tried to log into their accounts," he told Deccan Herald.

Pointing at a discrepancy in the new software, Dr Rajanikanth said that in the beginning it accepted the number of intakes in a particular stream only in the multiples of 60, viz 120, 180, and so on.

"Many colleges didn't have their intakes in the multiples of 60. Often, the number of seats were 30, 40, 50 etc. So, when these entries were made, the software failed to accept it," he added.

Although the web designers rectified this anomaly, the entire exercise consumed a lot of time and hence getting the mandatory approval faced repeated hindrances.  
MSRIT is one of the colleges which either did not get any information on the approval or were given approval for only a few courses.

Awaiting display

Among other colleges, RV College of Engineering too faced problems in getting approval. Although, it received approval for courses for which it had asked for an increase in the seats, its regular courses are yet to be displayed online. 

"We had asked for an increase in intakes for chemical, civil, instrumentation and telecom streams but received the approval only for chemical and civil branches. Seat allotment for other main courses is also yet to be provided," said Prof B Satyanarayana, Principal, RV Engineering College.

According to Prof Satyanarayana, the college has more than five years of accreditation and it never faced problems in seat allotment before. 

Since the AICTE has introduced the new online procedure and the new software, it might have some problems with regard to displaying the seat allotment, he added. 

"We do not have any problem with the new procedure. We still have time and are expecting to receive our seat allotment in a day or two," he added.

PESIT College says it remained untouched as it was allotted seats as per last year. The institute's Founder and Chairman M R Doreswamy said that it received 120 seats in all streams of engineering which was as per last year's allotment. 

"The new system is really good; there is a lot of transparency in the allotment of seats as everything is online," he said.