India to have no more new engg colleges?

Mumbai, Oct 31: State governments instructed the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to reject the recent proposal of more engineering colleges on Indian land. Over the past few years, the number of engineers are more than the demand.

Decades ago,limited number of seats were available for the aspiring engineers. But now the number of seats are more.

According to AICTE's report, India produced 4.6 lakh engineers in 2004-05, out of which 31% were computer engineers and in 2005-06, 5.2 lakhs engineers were produced. For the past five years, the number of engineers have increased to threefold as the number of colleges. Over 3,393 engineering colleges are there in India, which have a capacity of 14.85 lakhs seats. 70% engineering colleges are situated in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

This year, despite lowering the minimum scores for admission, there were not much students to fill the seats. After closing the admissions, AICTE found that two lakh seats were vacant.

SS Mantha, chairman of All-India Council for Technical Education was quoted as saying, "We have received letters from the Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Chhattisgarh governments telling us not to clear proposals for engineering institutes."

He added that seats are going vacant in rural parts of various states. There are no takers for specific engineering programmes, but the core engineering courses of civil, mechanical and electrical still have takers.

OneIndia News