AICTE granted 18,000 New Seats to Maharashtra Engineering Colleges

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi has granted 10,000 engineering degree courses and 8,000 diploma seats to various engineering colleges in Maharashtra for the academic session 2013-14.

However, same number of seats in degree and diploma courses were reduced too after many colleges applied for closure of courses citing lack of admissions. Some were forced to shut by AICTE for their failure to set up the required infrastructure and facilities.

Director of Technical Education (DTE) Subhash Mahajan said "There is an approximate increase of about 10,000 degree and 8,000 diploma seats as AICTE approved applications from many existing colleges to increase their intake capacity. Many new colleges also received green signal to start operations from coming academic year."

The state is already having nearly 1.50 lakh engineering seats in 364 colleges. Of these, a whopping 40,000 seats had remained vacant last year. Last year too, the apex body had approved 11 new engineering colleges in Maharashtra.

The technical education director informed all engineering admissions would be completed before the June end as per directives of AICTE. "After publishing results of MT-CET on June 5, we will immediately start the central admission process (CAP)," he said.

With an increase in numbers, this year also a large number of seats was expected to be remained vacant, DTE sources said. They added that AICTE had received about 180 applications from all over India for opening of new engineering colleges.

Though over 2.80 lakh candidates had appeared for MT-CET for engineering admissions; not even half of them are believed to be actually taking admissions to engineering courses in the state, they said.

The AICTE apex body had also issued notices to 101 institutions across India for failure to comply with norms.

Presently, in Maharashtra colleges have 1,48,084 Engineering seats and 1,61,087 diploma seats.