JNTUK extracts dues from technology colleges

Kakinada: The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Kakinada (JNTUK) is cracking the whip on its affiliated engineering, management and pharmacy colleges that fall under the aegis of the JNTUK. Many of these colleges spread across eight districts, have not remitted fees to the university. This has financially hit the university hard and it is now looking at collecting its dues from all the colleges, in a stringent manner. 

According to sources, the University has to collect more than Rs 300 crore from the colleges. The colleges are collecting Rs 2,350 per student at the time of admissions in the first year. From the second year, they collect Rs 1850 per student.  In fact, the student’s name does not feature in the college rolls, unless he pays the university fees. 

Nearly 3 lakh students pay their fees to the colleges. But according to university sources, many of the colleges are not remitting the fees to the university. In fact in some colleges, the arrears have piled up since 2013. The university is now facing a financial crisis due to this. When the University authorities try to collect fees, officials face political pressures.

With their strong political connections, the defaulting colleges continue to have their way. But the JNTUK has decided to strictly collect its dues.  There are as many as 259 engineering, management and pharmacy colleges affiliated to the JNTUK. The Director of Academic and Planning of the University, K. Satyanarayana who assumed charge eight months back,  has taken stringent action to collect the fees from the colleges. 

The university has stopped clearing the college files, until the managements clear their dues to some extent. This has yielded some results  this academic year. It is learnt that the university has been able to collect more than '100 crores till now. Mr Satyanarayana has also created a web portal that reveals the outstanding dues of the colleges.

“The university will take stringent action against colleges if they fail to pay their dues. We are not clearing the files of colleges which have failed to pay fees to the university. With this strict action, it will hopefully fetch good resul-ts financially to the university, at least to some extent,” said the university Vice-Chancellor V.S.S. Ku-mar. He said that last year colleges could pay 2013-14 dues and now they are remitting the amount for the academic year 2014-15.