Tech colleges get court relief on student intake

The Hyderabad High Court has refused a plea of the All India Council for Technical Education to set aside an interim order of a single which allowed several private engineering colleges in and around Hyderabad to make admissions for 2017-18.

A division bench comprising Justice V. Ramasubramanian and Justice N. Balayogi was dismissing a batch of appeals by the AICTE challenging the order of single judge that was granted in the petitions moved by Aurora Educational Society, Ravi Rishi Educational Society Church Educational Society, Tarakarama Educational Society and Sampati Educational Society.

The petitioners societies in their writs questioned the reduction of intake of seats in some of the colleges run by them and denial of extension of approval for the academic year 2017-18 for some of their colleges.

The AICTE had taken the action on the ground of not having approval for construction of buildings. It had stated that some of the colleges had produced the forged documents with regard to building approvals.

The bench pointed out that these colleges were in existence for the past four to 22 years and they had not come up for the first time for the grant of approval.

The bench observed that neither the showcause notices nor the orders issued by the AICTE disclosed either the source of information or the nature of the forgery committed by the institutions.

The bench said that “it is not open to AICTE now to fall back upon any allegations of forgery, when the ultimate action taken either to reduce the intake or to withdraw the approval was not on the basis of allegations of forgery but on the basis of the recommendations of the Standing Hearing Committee, not touching upon this allegation”.

While dismissing the appeals of the technical education council, the bench referred the writ petitions to single judge for final hearing.