Engg colleges threaten to shut down

Plead JNTU-H to withdraw cases against 16 colleges

Hyderabad: The 143 private engineering colleges which were denied affiliation by the Jawaharlal Technological University-Hyderabad citing lack of faculty and facilities have once again pleaded for affiliations.

“We have asked the university to give affiliation for the academic year 2014-2015 by reducing number of seats in the courses rather than closing down. We will rectify the deficiencies pointed out by the university,” N Goutham Rao, president, Telangana Private Engineering and Professional College Managements Association told reporters on Wednesday. The college managements had also asked the university to withdraw police cases on 16 colleges, he added.

Rao demanded that the government release the fee reimbursement. “While the government has announced that arrears will be released, so far we have not yet received the money,” he said. The college managements alleged that university had made several goof-ups to the report submitted by the expert committee.

“Several engineering colleges which have good facilities were once again de-affiliated. We have several doubts about the report submitted by the committee and have sought clarification from the university,” said Sunil, an engineering college representative.

The managements have threatened to shut down the colleges if the university does not come clean on the inspection report.

It may be worth mentioning here that JNTU-H has de-affiliated 807 courses in 143 colleges citing lack of facilities and infrastructure as per expert the committee report. On the directions of the Supreme Court, the university had constituted an expert committee to inspect the colleges. The committee has recently submitted the report to the government which pointed out several deficiencies in the colleges. It is learnt the government has decided not extend the scheme to erring minority colleges.