A change has made problem to the students, who ate admitting in lateral entry in diploma courses and they demanded it to be scrapped by the state government. All the odisha state Diploma colleges demanded the AICTE to cut down the norms.
Initially, the seats that were left vacant after admission into the first year, were carried forward to the second year admission.
This meant availability of additional seats for lateral entry. By limiting the seats to 20%, AICTE indirectly scrapped the carry forward of vacant seats from this year.
The Odisha Private Engineering Schools Association (OPESA) has requested the state government not to scrap the previous system as it would result in more vacant seats in the institutes.
OPESA president Saroj Sahoo, said "We have a sanctioned strength of 32,000, but a survey has found that around 50,000 students pass out of the diploma institutes in the State every year. This large number is due to the lateral entry admission,"
If the number of students passing out of diploma institutes decreases, it will affect the student strength in the degree engineering colleges too. Lesser number of students passing out of diploma institutes will indicate lesser number of students available for lateral entry into degree engineering colleges.
"We have asked the State Government to look into the increasing demand for the skilled manpower for the industries and how a drop in the number of diploma engineers will affect it," Sahoo added.
Even though the AICTE norm is uniform all over the country, a State Government can propose a modification to AICTE if it deems it necessary.
A senior government official said if the requirement is felt, they might ask AICTE to keep the previous system, but nothing had been finalised yet.