17 New Technical Institutes Are Approved By AICTE

Around 17 new technical institutes, which include engineering colleges, will go functional in the Maharashtra state from the coming academic year 2012-13. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which regulates technical education in the country, has cleared these institutions as a part of the approval process for new institutions, new course and variation in student intake for 2012-13.

AICTE's officiating chairman S.S Mantha said that “We received 669 applications for new institutions including engineering, polytechnics, management, pharmacy, architecture and applied arts colleges, among others. Out of these, 76 proposals including 17 from Maharashtra have been cleared. All the remaining have been rejected.

He included that details about the approved institutions and their sanctioned intake will be released in a day or two. “We have now moved into the appeals process for those institutions whose applications have been rejected. The AICTE started the approval process for 2012-13 by seeking online submission of proposals between October and December 2011. The process for scrutiny of these proposals had begun in January and ended on March 31.

The state Government had earlier written to the AICTE urging that no new engineering colleges be sanctioned this year in view of the large number of engineering seats going vacant for the last few years in the state.

As of now, Maharashtra accounts for nearly 325 engineering colleges that collectively have a student intake of over 1.20 lakh seats. For the last two years, the engineering colleges in the state have rported close to 20,000 vacant seats.