HYDERABAD: The AP High Court
on Thursday stayed a government order aimed at regulating the filling
up of management quota seats in private engineering colleges.
Responding to scores of petitions filed by private engineering and
pharmacy colleges in the state challenging GO No. 66 of 2012, the bench
comprising chief justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and justice N V Ramana
directed the state not to give effect to the GO until further orders.
The GO had allowed the state government to regulate managements of
private colleges while giving admission under management quota, NRI
quota etc. It had made it mandatory for colleges to reduce the number of
seats meant for NRIs and also have a transparent method of filling
these seats particularly through the online system.
Appearing
for various colleges, several senior advocates, both from the Supreme
Court and the AP High Court, argued that the colleges have been
following the mandate of the constitution as far as convenor quota seats
are concerned and that they have every right to fill the management
quota seats in a liberal way. Seeking to intrude into this area by
regulating fee structure is not fair on the part of the state, they
argued, adding that they were not consulted before bringing this GO.
Claiming that they provided state-of-the-art infrastructure in their
colleges, they maintained that the new rules would make it unviable for
them to run the show. When the GO was issued last year, the private
colleges had succeeded in getting it stayed on the ground that it was
announced at the last minute after the Eamcet notification had been
issued.
However, additional advocate general K G Krishna Murthy
told the court that the state had jurisdiction over these colleges and
hence had every right to control unscrupulous private players. "We
brought this GO to bring in transparency in the admission process," he
said, adding that mere amendment of certain rules could not amount to
violation of rights.
The bench directed the authorities of higher education
and technical education to file their counters furnishing all the
details pertaining to filling of management quota seats through online
system. Apart from the current petitioners - Shreyas educational
society, Abhinav hightech educational society etc - several petitions
filed last year challenging the same GO too were heard on Thursday.Courtesy: TOI
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