One Lakh Engineering Seats are Left Vacant in AP

The problem of not taking the engineering seats continues. One lakh (1,00,392) seats are left vacant in the general quota in numerous engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh, raising a big question on the survival of private educational institutions in the state.

AP is credited with having the highest number of engineering college in the country. The state, was the at the forefront of privatisation of higher education in the nineties had been at the receiving end since the boom hit the ceiling and colleges mushroomed in every state including Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

The tuition fee reimbursement subsidy scheme in the state was introduced by the former chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy. The CM introduced the programme for the poor, benefiting almost the 27 lakh students at a cost of Rs. 2,750 crore per annum in the shape of fee reimbursement from undergraduate to professional education.

The Present CM Kiran Kumar Reddy government has put several conditions of attendance, merit list and also income ceiling to get the subsidy benefit.

When Y S Rajasekhar Reddy died, the Rosaiah government terminated the scheme and huge arrears of Rs. 4,000 crore in 2010 grew to Rs., 7,000 crore in 2012, compelling the private colleges to seek Supreme Court intervention. The year 2011 was a turbulent period for students as the private colleges even withheld their hall tickets for final exams and released them only after court intervention.

The number of 40,273 seats in 2009-10 are left vacant, after the death of the YSR's it increased to 476,310 seat 2011 and now it crosses the marks of 1,00392 seats. There are 720 engineering colleges in andhra pradesh with nearly 3.39 lakh seats.

Around 6 college in Mehbubnagar, Nalgonda, Nellore and Vizianagarm Districts had zero admission while 24 college had less than 10 students admissions and some of these are in big towns. Nearly 253 colleges could not filled the 35% of seats in this year. Only 262 colleges get more than 200 students admissions and in 53 colleges, 500 to 800 students admitted.

Out of 2.10 lakh students eligible for admissions this year only 1.37 lakh students attended the certification verification of which 1,34,373 lakh students were allotted the seats.