Fee issue at flashpoint

Fee issue at flashpoint
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Highlights

Fee issue at flashpoint, The issue of fee reimbursement seems to be snowballing into a major controversy with both the governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh unwilling to relent on their demands.

  • All-party team from AP to call on Central Ministers today
  • Naidu can spend a trillion on capital, but not on fees: KCR

  • EAMCET counselling delay likely; AP taking legal recourse
  • AP also moving Centre to press T govt to reconcile its stand
  • It points to Article 371-D which protects interests of Seemandhras
  • TRS govt says no question of budging on excluding AP students
  • Minister Jagadish Reddy asks Naidu not to meddle in their affairs

Hyderabad: The issue of fee reimbursement seems to be snowballing into a major controversy with both the governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh unwilling to relent on their demands. The Telangana government on Tuesday reiterated that it would not continue with the fee reimbursement system introduced by the previous government in the united Andhra Pradesh and would extend the new FAST (Financial Assistance for the Students of Telangana) scheme only to the students of T State. With both the fee reimbursement scheme and the nativity issue becoming a big stumbling block in starting the admissions process in engineering and medical colleges in both the States, the AP government is taking recourse to legal action and is also knocking on the doors of the Centre to intervene and resolve the issue. AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has asked HRD Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao to lead an all-party delegation to Delhi on the issue.

The delegation will meet Union Minister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and HRD Minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday. They would demand that the issue of nativity be decided on the basis of Article 371-D which safeguarded the rights of local people in employment and education, and was created after agitation in the state of united Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu on Monday asked KCR not to politicise the issue and said that T government should follow the existing norms and cannot have its own rules to decide the nativity of a person.

An angry T Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has dismissed the earlier format of the fee reimbursement scheme as a “major scam” and says that the new scheme is aimed at cleansing the system and ensuring that only deserving students benefited. He has also rejected the demand of the Andhra government that the fees of Andhra students studying in Telangana also be reimbursed. Taking a dig at Naidu, KCR said: “He is talking of building a new capital city like Singapore by spending Rs 1.5 trillion (Dh91.5 billion). But he does not have money to pay the fees of Seemandhra students. We will pay the fees of our students, let them reimburse the fees of their students”.

A Telangana Minister, G Jagdish Reddy, has asked the AP Chief Minister not to interfere with administrative matters pertaining to the T state. Reddy said the decisions taken by the T Cabinet in regard to the fee reimbursement were in the interest of the students of Telangana and were a step forward towards rendering justice to them as they had suffered a lot and even lost their privileges in education in the undivided state. Naidu had no right to interfere or even comment on the decisions taken by the T government, he added.

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