Will shut all erring colleges, asserts KCR

​Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday reiterated his government’s firm stance on closing down all private engineering colleges who exploit the fee-reimbursement scheme.

Stating this while replying to clarifications sought by Opposition members on the fee-reimbursement scheme in the Assembly, the Chief Minister said this issue was being twisted and some people were saying that the government would close down all private institutions.

KCR said it was the responsibility of the government to protect the interests of the students and the fee reimbursement and scholarships were intended for the benefit of the students and not meant for the institutions.

If the private institutions try to exploit the scheme for their own benefit, the government would certainly close down those institutions, he said.

The Chief Minister assured the members that the government would clear all the pending dues of the fee-reimbursement scheme by March-end and would convene an all-party meeting to hammer out a permanent solution on fine-tuning the implementation of the scheme.

He said the government had not deviated from the rules that were framed when the scheme was introduced by the previous government.

KCR said that pendency of payments during an academic year has been inbuilt in the scheme itself right from its inception.

The registration of the students continues throughout the academic year as various courses have different admission schedules.

This makes it possible to arrive at the total number of students only at the end of the academic year. Hence it would not be possible to know the exact number of eligible students or the quantum money that was required to be reimbursed till the end of the financial year.