Court stalls admission to 20 Maharashtra b-schools, directs AICTE to conduct checks
Admissions to almost twenty private MBA and engineering colleges in Maharashtra stand postponed for at least another two and a half months for this academic year. A division bench of the Bombay High court ruled today that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will have to visit these colleges over the next two and a half months to verify and check for any deficiencies.
Only after that will a decision be taken on the admissions. This ruling came after almost twenty management and engineering colleges, mostly management, had filed writ petitions in the court challenging the AICTE move to withhold their letters of approval (LoAs) to start new engineering and management courses from the academic year 2010-11.
While AICTE had published the names of these colleges in its list of newly approved institutions released in June 2010, it did not send them their LoAs. Without the LoAs, the Maharashtra Government’s Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) — which manages management admissions in the state — would not allow these colleges to participate in the Centralized Admission Process (CAP).
Some of these colleges include Modern Institute of Business Management (MIBM), Purandar College of Engineering and Management – Kondhwa, Shree Ramchandra College of Engineering – Lonikand, Pune Vidyarthi Gruha’s Management Institute, Vignaharta Educational Trust – Mumbai, Prabhakar Patil Education Society – Raigad and Sant Dnyaneshwar Shikshan Sanstha – Sangli.
These colleges were part of DTE’s admission process and their names appeared in the list of approved colleges in the Maharastra CET information brochure. The institutes had claimed they were recommended for approval by AICTE. However, the approval was later stayed without citing any reason, leading to the current impasse.
According to AICTE’s lawyer Rui Rodrigues, “The General Council of the AICTE had approved these colleges but the Appeal Committee withheld the approval over some deficiencies in the colleges and hence the approvals were not given.”
Lawyer Anil Antorkar who appeared on behalf of the aggrieved colleges said that the AICTE will now visit these colleges and the deficiencies will be cleared.
The colleges on their part claim they are prepared for any visit by the AICTE. Said Gajanan Ekbote, Executive Chairman of the Progressive Education Society (PES), which runs MIBM, “We are ready to face any visit by the AICTE. They can come and check our colleges.”
While Mr Rodrigues said that in all likelihood admissions to these colleges will not happen this year, Ekbote thought otherwise.
“Admissions will be postponed till September. We will wait till September to start admitting students,” he declared.
Even if the colleges do receive clearance in September, their academic sessions would be nearly two months behind schedule compared to other b-schools in Maharashtra.
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