Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Tuesday made it clear to the unaided private engineering colleges in the Telangana state that the state government`s NOC is also required to introduce new courses and to increase seat intake apart from the approvals by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and universities concerned.
Reminding the colleges about Section 20 of the Telangana Education Act, which enables universities to grant an NOC after considering the requirement, and recalling the earlier observations of the Supreme Court on the said provision,
The High Court dismissed a batch of petitions filed by several private engineering colleges to direct the government and JNTU (Hyderabad) to allow them to introduce B.Tech courses in new emerging subjects such as artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, robotics, data sciences, cybersecurity etc., and to allow them to increase the intake of more students in the said courses, which had got permission.
The division bench comprising Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice C.V. Bhaskar Reddy, recently heard the batch of petitions of the colleges and pronounced the Judgements , two days ago.
The colleges alleged that the Telangana state government is not permitting the new courses or the increase in the seat intake on the grounds that financial implications i.e. fee reimbursement and scholarships will pose a burden on the government. They submitted to the court that they are ready to give an undertaking that they will not t ask for financial assistance on behalf of the students, who would join the courses in the additional seats. Colleges also requested the court for additional in take of 2,670 seats which will have a financial burden of around Rs 13.90 crores per one academic year.
Without commenting on the figures of the financial implications, the court also viewed that additional intake of seats would certainly have a financial bearing on the state exchequer.
However, the court reminded that the state government is empowered under Section 20 of the Telangana Education Act, 1982 to grant permission for establishing any educational institution as well as to run new course in the existing institutions or to increase the intake in existing courses.
Therefore, existing institutions can start new courses or increase additional seats in the existing courses only after obtaining NOC by the state government which depends upon various factors, such as educational requirements in the locality as well as the financial implications on the government due to fee reimbursement to various categories of students.
The court also rejected the pleas of the colleges, which challenged the Regulations 3.4, 5.5, 5.6 and 6.1 of the JNTU Affiliation Procedure and Regulations (with effect from 2020-21), which mandates JNTU to obtain permission from the state government for offering new courses or increase in the seat intake in existing courses.
