Avtar Bhat
JAMMU, Feb 8: Hundreds of students undergoing training in engineering and other professional degree courses from J&K are facing a bleak future after the respective colleges have issued warnings of terminating their admissions in case they fail to deposit the fee at the earliest.
Among these students some have passed six semesters in various streams of engineering and other professional degree courses and had to appear for the seventh semester by middle of this year. However, these students said that they have been evicted from their respective colleges and have been debarred to appear in any internal examination of the colleges beginning this month. The students said that they have also been evicted from college hostels by the management for not depositing the fee for last three years.
The parents of these students are running from pillar to post for justice and they have approached every one in the Government including the State BJP leadership seeking their immediate intervention in the matter.
Though the State BJP has also taken up the issue with the BJP leadership in Punjab urging it to take up the issue with the concerned colleges and impress upon them not to cancel the admissions as the Government is in process to release their scholarships at an earliest but to no avail.
So far two colleges in Punjab including Rayat Bahara College of Engineering Mohali and Adesh College Mohali have taken a tough stance against the students from J&K undergoing training in these two institutes under Prime Minister’s Scholarship Scheme for their failure in depositing the fees for last three years. When only two semesters of the degree are left the college has asked the students either deposit the fee or face eviction.
When contacted the Director Rayat Bahra College of Engineering, Mohali, Dr Rehani told Excelsior that the College can’t afford the admission without fee any long now. These students have failed to deposit fee for last three years and the management is forced to take action. He said no student has been terminated so far but the students should deposit the fee at an earliest otherwise the management would be left with no option but to take action.
When asked that the students have been given admission under the PM’s Scholarship Scheme, he said the college management is not responsible for that. “We gave admission to students and they have to pay the fee as college can’t run without fee”, he added.
However, the Commissioner Secretary, Higher Education, J&K, Sarita Chauhan said that the students of 2013 and 2014 who got admissions through some NGOs and who were not falling under the merit category fixed by the AICTE are not eligible for scholarship under the scheme.
She said the students with less than 64 percent merit were not eligible for admission under the scheme. They were granted admission by some NGOs but they don’t fall under the criteria, she added.
But there is a basic contradiction what the Government and college management says and what the admission letters of the respective colleges and AICTE say.
The admission letter given to one Anu Kumari of village Salana Saroor of tehsil and district Kishtwar states that her admission has been provisionally admitted in the Rayat Bahra Group of Institutions under the PM’s Scholarship Scheme in the year 2013.
The letter has been duly signed by then representative of college management Dr Manoj Bali. But Anu is among hundreds students who is also facing threat that her admission will be cancelled for not depositing the fee so far.
Sources said the problem surfaced after the decision was taken in the 16th meeting of Inter -Ministerial Committee on Special Scholarship Scheme for J&K held on November 24 last year that as far as representation pertaining to academic year 2012-2013-14 and 2014-15 are concerned, that since these representations are very old hence they may not be considered.
Sources said soon the circulation of the minutes of the meeting the respective colleges hardened their stand against the students and started issuing notices to them.
However, it is not known when for the last three years these students were fighting for release of scholarship why the AICTE or Inter-Ministerial Committee did not categorically wrote a letter to respective colleges that these admissions have been cancelled as they don’t fall under the merit. Moreover, why AICTE has included the name of these students in the list and why did not it object the respective colleges for granting the admission to these students under PM’s Scholarship scheme are some questions posed by the parents of these students.
The parents of these students, who belonged to remote areas of the State, said this way the Government was playing with the career of hundreds of the students of the State, who feel totally cheated on the name of PM’s scholarship scheme.
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