Over 800 first semester engineering students have been forced to sit out of the practical exams of the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), which commenced on Thursday. This is being blamed on the stalemate between the Higher Education Department and the Department of Technical Education (DTE) regarding the approval of admissions.
As a result, these students have not received university seat numbers as the DTE has not approved their admissions, because they were made after August 15.
Higher Education Minister R.V. Deshpande, when asked about the issue, said the delay was a result of the extension of dates for counselling for engineering as a large number of seats had remained vacant. “We decided to give more opportunities for counselling and extended the date till August 23 (the Supreme Court had set August 15 as the deadline).”
M.K. Panduranga Setty, secretary of the Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges’ Association, said there were at least 168 colleges in the State which were faced with this problem.
He said all the 800-odd students whose validity of admission was at stake were admitted under the government quota.
‘Governmental level’
VTU Vice-Chancellor H. Maheshappa said the varsity was out of the loop as the discussion on admission approval was being done at the ‘governmental level.’ “But we are ready to conduct the practical exams for these students after the theory exams (December 4 to 20),” he added.
Last resort
Meanwhile, private colleges and the State government are getting ready to make an appeal before the Karnataka High Court. Mr. Setty said, “This is our last resort. We (the association, as the colleges and students will be considered one party in the case) have sent an appeal to all the colleges to send in the required information to be passed on to our lawyer. We will be approaching the court next week.”
