109 private junior colleges fail to get affiliation

​Hyderabad: The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) has announced that 109 private junior colleges have been shut down for the academic year 2018-19. In addition to this, some junior colleges whose applications for affiliation are under scrutiny are also likely to lose their affiliation.

Addressing a media conference here on Wednesday, TSBIE secretary A Ashok said in all 1,698 junior colleges had applied through online for affiliation. Of them, so far, only 1,313 private junior colleges have been granted affiliation, he said.

Out of the remaining 385 colleges, 109 junior colleges have registered themselves online but did not pay the required fee to take the process of affiliation further. This has made them ineligible to run the colleges for the academic year 2018-19, he said.

He said that applications of 101 more junior colleges seeking affiliation are at various stages of consideration. He said, "While 59 applications are under the scrutiny of the officials of the Board and another 42 applications are under verification by the District Intermediate Education Officers (DIEOs)."

Applications of these colleges have been returned several times due to the shortfall in submitting the supporting documents like FDR, sanitation certificate, maintaining joint accounts, not payment of penalties, non-submission of fire safety certificates and the like. Some out of these applications under process might face rejection.

Further, 50 more junior colleges have applied for shifting from one district to another and one mandal to another. Since the approvals had to come from the State government their applications had been forwarded to the government. Similarly, the fate of 62 junior colleges is hanging in the balance because the colleges are running in such buildings which do not have the required 'offset of building' space as per the rules. Following this, the fire department has been refusing to give no objection certificates to these junior colleges.

Ashok said that all these colleges are located in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medchal districts. As the Board is not in a position to take a decision on this, the same had been sent to the State government for taking a final decision. "If the colleges' complete submission of all necessary documents by June 20, then only they will be granted affiliation," he said.

He said the first-in and first-out policy has been followed in the process of granting online affiliations and this proved successful. Also, “The process had made the TSBIE implementing a transparent system to grant affiliations eliminating delays, corruption and interference from middlemen.

The TSBIE Secretary said that the Board had issued notification for affiliation on December 15, 2017, six months ahead of the starting of the academic year. The Last date for the submission of the application had been fixed as March 31, 2018. However, following representations from the colleges the dates have been extended twice and since the admissions have been started June 20 has been fixed as the final cutoff date for granting affiliations, he said.