The Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday blamed the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) for granting permissions to start new engineering colleges without taking its views into consideration.
"AICTE is giving permissions even as the state government is discouraging private institutions to come up with more colleges. When institutions are approaching us, we are suggesting them to look to the fact that many colleges were closed down for lack of student enrollment. AICTE, however, says there is still lot of demand for engineering colleges in cities,” chief minister K Rosaiah said.
Across the 600 engineering colleges that Andhra Pradesh has currently, about 60,000 seats are still lying vacant, the chief minister said in an interactive session with the membership of Confederation of Indian Industry's southern regional council held here. “We will have to improve the standards, which actually is the job of the AICTE. But I think this is a temporary phase.”
The rumblings of December 31, 2010, the deadline for the Srikrishna Commission to come out with its report on the separate statehood, still continues with the industry, especially the IT sector, today expressing its concerns over the repercussions post the submission of the report.
Rosaiah said the state government was taking all precautionary measures to deal with the situation after December 31. “Even we too don’t know what the outcome of the report will be. We will try to protect the industry to the best of our ability,” he said.