Telangana Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Kadiyam Srihari on Tuesday found himself in an embarassing situation when he informed the Assembly that the Government did not carryout inspection of its engineering colleges and confined the same to private colleges in the wake of the direction of the Supreme Court.
The Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi caught the Minister on the wrong foot and opined that the Government leaving those colleges in the Government sector un-inspected was contempt of court.
He said that the court order in October last applied to all engineering colleges in the State to find out whether they met parameters fixed by the All India Council of Technical Education.
The court had ordered inspection by experts in the field and in response, the Government constituted a committee with representatives of the Indian Institute of Technology, BITS-Pilani and National Institute of Technology.
AICTE approval
Mr. Srihari said that the government colleges were not inspected because the approval of AICTE was not required for them including the constituent colleges of universities. He also said that the court did not order submission of inspection reports and merely asked the Government to let the private institutions rectify their deficiencies by giving them one more chance. So, the Government relaxed minor deficiencies while the major ones were informed to managements through notices.
Mr. Owaisi said that the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University as the nodal agency for the purpose and the Department of Technical Education had concealed the experts' report without submitting it to the Supreme Court.
In the face of a spirited argument by Mr.Owaisi, the Minister said that he will find out the position and respond if a separate meeting was arranged or the issue allowed to be discussed under a different rule of the legislature. Either way, he promised to answer before end of the current budget session of Assembly.