Telangana HC dismisses pleas of private Eng colleges
Deccan ChronicleHyderabad: 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 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 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. 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, which mandates JNTU to obtain permission from the state government for offering new courses or increase in the seat intake in existing courses.