Eamcet engineering counselling likely from August 23

Counselling for admissions to engineering colleges  is likely to commence on August 23 and classes will commence in the third week of September.

Officials hope that the stalemate over the fee structure and reimbursement will be be resolved on Thursday when the cabinet sub-committee is expected to meet and make a announcement on the fee hike and the schedule for admissions to engineering colleges.

Meanwhile, the carrot-and-stick approach of the government to engineering college managements appears to be yielding the desired results. The talks between representatives of managements and chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Tuesday made good progress towards consensus. Wednesday being a holiday on account of Independence Day, the cabinet sub-committee will meet on Thursday and announce the schedule. The government hopes that the managements of all engineering colleges will furnish undertaking letters to officials of higher education that they are agreeing to a fee Rs 35,000 per annum for two years.

According to sources, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha had thrown a scare into the college managements with the threat of sudden inspections. As most of the colleges are not following the AICTE norms and depriving their students of quality education, the managements have finally fallen in line with the government’s proposed fee of Rs 35,000, which is a nominal hike of Rs 4,000 for a convener quota seat and almost Rs 60,000 less than what is charged for a management quota seat. From this year there will only be one fee for both convener and management quota seats. The convener quota seats will be filled online and the management quota seats by managements as heretofore.

The government issued two ordinances and a GO to control the engineering colleges. However, when the managements finally agreed to the fee fixed by the government, the government will not go aggressively in enforcing the ordinance and the GO. The government is likely to ask the task forces, which are supervised by an IPS officer, to go slow on inspecting the engineering colleges to know whether they are following AICTE norms or not.

The total number of engineering seats in the state is 3.2 lakh and only two lakh candidates have qualified in the EAMCET. Of the qualified, around 50,000 students have migrated to other states.