‘AICTE action on deficient colleges arbitrary, biased’

Mumbai : Representatives from a city engineering college called the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) action on deficient colleges ‘arbitrary’ and ‘biased’.

Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil Pratishtan College of Engineering, Sion is one of the engineering colleges in the city which lost permission to admit students from the next academic year onwards.

Based on a complaint by an NGO called the Citizens Forum for Sanctity in Education, the governor had directed the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) last year to conduct inspection of colleges in the state. The NGO had brought to light that many engineering colleges submit false affidavits regarding their infrastructure and faculty-student ratio to get Extension of Approvals (EOA) to run the college. Every college has to seek EOA every year.

The DTE had appointed a committee for each college to inspect their infrastructure. Their report had found that out of 348 technical institutes in the state, 345 were found to be deficient in some or the other factor. The matter was reported to AICTE. AICTE had held a closed-door meeting in April with principals of 200 of the 345 colleges which had been found deficient.

“Why were only 200 colleges called?” asked Appasaheb Desai, part of the management of Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil Pratishtan College of Engineering. “The NGO and AIPMT are in collision and are targeting specific colleges,” he alleged. “Before this too some NGOs had complained regarding deficiencies in colleges, but why was no action taken based on their complaint,” he asked.

He said that as per a submission to the Supreme Court the AICTE had said that even if there is a single deficiency, it does not have the power to give extension of approval. “For the same deficiency, the AICTE has given different penalty to different colleges. What we ask is for a non-discriminatory treatment,” he said.

Further, he alleged that the people part of the Citizen Forum NGO who had complained to the governor teach in A. P. Shah College of Engineering, Thane  which does not satisfy norms laid down by the AICTE. “Before complaining, they must see if their college satisfies norms,’ he said.