Regulator cancels 998 seats in Himachal private varsities

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 3

To enforce strict norms for maintaining high standards of education, the Himachal Pradesh Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Commission has cancelled 1,000 seats of various streams in private universities.

“We have followed guidelines of the University Grants Commission, All-India Council of Technical Education and National Council of Teachers Education and provisions made in the Private Universities Act to ensure the norms are met,” said an official.

The intake of students for various courses was approved by the state government in the absence of the regulatory commission which was quashed by the High Court in September 2013 and later revived by the Supreme Court in May 2014. The commission reviewed the student intake approved by the government, sought details of infrastructure and faculty, asked the private universities to comply with norms and cancelled the seats of universities which were not following norms.

Some private universities surrendered seats and even dropped some courses after the regulatory commission toughened its stand.

Baddi University in Solan, which was sanctioned 1,800 seats, got approval for 1,380 seats. A total of 360 seats were cancelled in the engineering stream and 60 seats in the MBA.

The revised intake of Arni University in Kangra was cut from 2,225 to 1,955 as the commission cancelled 60 seats each in engineering and MBA courses and dropped four courses — PGDCA, MA political science, public administration and education.

Similarly, Manav Bharti University in Solan got the revised intake of 1,110 seats against 1,290 seats. It dropped the B.Pharma and D.Pharma (ayurveda) courses and the number of seats for the BA LLB course was cut down from 120 to 60.

APG Shimla University faced a cut of 120 seats as it dropped multimedia course. The number of seats in the BJMC was reduced from 60 to 30.

Shoolini University suffered a loss of eight seats as it dropped MTech, environment sciences and MSc (bio chemistry) courses accounting for 38 seats, but it got additional seats in MSc (chemistry).

As the private universities pleaded for approval of more courses and demanded increase in the number of seats, especially in engineering and management courses, only 3,055 of the 5,905 seats were sanctioned for engineering courses.

The APG Shimla, Jaypee, Chitkara and Baddi universities, which were allotted 390, 540, 525 and 600 seats, respectively, were able to fill 100 per cent, 92.03 per cent, 90.19 per cent and 68.17 per cent seats.

The percentage of seats filled by the ICFAI, IEC and Eternal universities was a meagre 3.33 per cent, 10.33 per cent and 10.83 per cent, respectively. Career Point University and Indus International University could fill 12.33 per cent and 15.83 per cent seats despite relaxation in admission norms.