Hyderabad: In a major setback to the state government, the All India Council for Technical Education has turned down the recent state Cabinet resolution seeking a ban on allowing new engineering colleges and fixing a cap on intake in existing ones.

The Cabinet had, on November 28, passed a resolution and sent it to the AICTE to check the mushrooming of engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh which led to “zero admissions” in several colleges and deteriorating education standards in many colleges due to lack of qualified faculty.


The Cabinet also asked AICTE to cap seats at 420 for existing un-accredited and 540 for accredited colleges.

Sources said the decision was taken during the AICTE executive meeting convened in New Delhi on December 19 and the same was informed to Union HRD minister Pallam Raju. Surprisingly, AICTE chairman Prof M.S. Mantha had all along maintained that the body would consider imposing a ban on new colleges and the ceiling on intake if the the state Cabinet passes a resolution to this effect.

However, sources said that AICTE had now backtracked, saying that it may invite “legal tangles” if a ban is imposed in a particular state since AICTE is a national-level body that adopts a national policy and cannot have separate policies for different states.

The rejection is seen as a major embarrassment for the state government since it has recently initiated efforts to improve education standards in engineering colleges by constituting task forces to verify infrastructure facilities and faculty.

Source : DC