4 Aug 2012 14:50:02 IST
, The Hindu
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EAMCET counselling by mid-August
Engineering Entrance
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The government appears keen to resolve ticklish issues relating to Supreme Court’s direction on uniform fee structure and fee reimbursement and ensure that EAMCET counselling for engineering courses begins by middle of this month.
In an attempt to tackle the reimbursement issue, the government appointed an experts committee on Friday headed by P. Jayaprakash Rao, chairman, AP State Council of Higher Education, to go into the Supreme Court directive and recommend the best option available suiting its finances and helping eligible candidates.
Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy who announced the committee wanted it to study and submit the report “as early as possible”. This would enable the Cabinet Sub Committee on fee reimbursement scheme headed by Social Welfare Minister Pithani Satyanarayana to arrive at a decision.
The committee comprises of K.C. Reddy, chairman, REECAP, as special invitee, and J. Raymond Peter, principal secretary, Social Welfare, as member-convener; M.G. Gopal, D. Sambasiva Rao, principal secretaries of Higher Education and Finance respectively, V. Ramakistaiah and Md. Suleman Siddiqui, both former vice-chancellors of Osmania University, Uday B. Desai, director, IIT, Hyderabad and Tulasi Ram Das, vice-chancellor, JNTU, Kakinada, are its members.
Yet, there is apprehension that the experts committee may not be able to complete the exercise in the next ten days and the government’s plan to start counselling could go awry. Critics argue that it could take a month to come to a firm decision and this could add to the tension among the 2.2 lakh candidates eligible for engineering courses.
Mr. Gopal, who held an impromptu meeting with officials on Friday on the issue, however, asserted that the entire process, would not take more than 10 days and that the government would be in a position to start counselling by middle of the month. He told this correspondent that the committee would begin its work on Saturday itself.
He said the candidates would not suffer any loss of academic year. There was loss of only five days in commencement of counselling so far as the exercise was begun last year on July 28.
Commitment
Meanwhile, the annual extra burden in the event of the government taking a decision to bear the entire fee reimbursement without a cap is estimated at Rs.482 crore. This will be in addition to the usual annual commitment of Rs.1,500 crore towards the fee reimbursement scheme.
Vriti Edustore
