| THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a major embarrassment to the state government, the high court on Monday questioned the education department's claim that the scope of technical education education was low in the state. Also, the court directed to give approval, which was earlier denied by the government, to five polytechnic institutions in the state.
Refusing to accept the reasons cited by the government, the court observed that the state was liable to give approval to the five new self-financing polytechnic colleges, which have already secured approval from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the statutory body for technical education in the country.
Judge P B Sureshkumar, who came down heavily on the government's attitude towards self-financing educational institutions, directed the education department to take immediate steps to ensure that students would be able to join any of the five new polytechnic institutes.
The polytechnic institutions had approached the high court with the complaint that the government denied approval. They also informed the court that 50 per cent of the seats at the institutes would be kept aside to admit meritorious candidates at subsidized fee.
Without the government approval, the institutions are not in a position to admit students for the academic year 2017-18.
Two institutions - SCMS polytechnic in Ernakulam and Kottakkal Polytechnic in Malappuram - obtained approval from AICTE in 2016. But when the government refused to give approval, both the institutions had approached the court to carry out admission and later for conducting examinations.
Though the state directorate of technical education included the names of these two colleges in the prospectus for admission for the year 2017-18, the names were later dropped after AICTE gave approval to three more institutions. Incidentally, the state government did not register any objections when its opinion was sought by AICTE regarding giving approval to the colleges.
Later, through a common counter affidavit filed in the court, the state contended that AICTE considered only the infrastructure facilities of the institutions and not the demand for such courses in the state. Overall quality of the technical education in the state, employability of successful candidates etc, were taken into account by the government while granting approval and there was no appreciable increase in the scope of polytechnic education in the state, especially in the self-financing sector, it was contended.
The court also noted that the government itself has sought permission to start a few more polytechnic colleges and thus the reason of low scope of technical education doesn't stand.
Terming the government stand 'arbitrary, unreasonable and against public interest', the court said, "The state government has all power to take appropriate action either by legislation or by executive action to improve the quality of education in the state, including that of polytechnic colleges. Inability on the part of the government to do so shall not be a reason for declining approval to educational..." |