Mumbai : All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has now cracked the whip on Thadomal Shahani Engineering College (TSEC) in Bandra, asking them to transfer all its students to nearby colleges, after the institute failed to obtain an occupancy certificate for the top two floors of one of its buildings.
The move came months after it forced two engineering colleges in Sion and Nerul to shift some students to other institutes. The AICTE directed the state’s Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) to transfer all students, who were admitted to the Bandra institute in the current academic year.
In June, the Bombay High Court (HC) had directed the college to furnish the occupancy certificate within four months. Gopakumaran Thampi, principal, TSEC, said that the college had finished the formalities of getting the certificate.
“We expect the certificate shortly, but the AICTE in its over-enthusiasm, asked us to shift the students. We will consult our lawyers and seek an intervention from the Supreme Court or HC,” he adds.
Earlier, in October, the AICTE had ordered the transfer of over 30 freshers from SIES Graduate School of Technology at Nerul to other institutes, after the college failed to meet the conditions laid down by the HC. A month before that, around 400 students from Padmabhushan Vasantdada Patil Pratishthan’s (PVPP) College of Engineering at Sion were moved to other colleges following a Supreme Court decision to put a conditional stay on an HC order that allowed the college to conduct admissions for the academic year.
The AICTE has taken a tough stand against the state’s engineering colleges that didn’t fulfil norms. PVPP and TSEC are among the seven colleges in the state that were barred from admitting any student this academic year. Several other colleges, including SIES, had their intake reduced by the technical education body.
When the colleges moved HC, it allowed them to admit the students, albeit with some time-bound conditions. Earlier this month, activists belonging to the Citizen Forum for Sanctity in Educational System, a Thane-based non-government organization, had written to the AICTE, seeking action against TSEC, as the college had failed to meet teh HC’s condition in the stipulated time.
The college maintained that the apex body’s actions against them were part of a “witch hunt” that was being conducted on behalf of some education activists. “It appears that these activists are being harbored by some rival institutes. The AICTE has targeted us when there are much worse institutes in the city,” said an official from TSEC.
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