After much dilly-dallying caused by the friction with neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, Telangana has finally agreed to start the counseling for admission in engineering colleges from Thursday.
While the process of verification of certificates of eligible students in the State will start from Thursday, web based counseling in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will start from August 17.
According to schedule released by the AP State Council for Higher Education, from 17 till August 25, students holding 1st rank to 50,000 rank will be covered under the web options.
The Supreme Court has already ordered both the States to complete the admission in all the engineering colleges by August 31 and start the classes in the first week of September.
The schedule was finalised at a meeting of APSCHE in Hyderabad, which was attended by the officials of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. However the council chairman Venugopala Reddy was not present. Telangana State Council for Higher Education Chairman Prof T Papi Reddy said the verification of certificates will take place till August 23. "Every day 2,50,000 students will have to get their certificates verified at help centers in all the districts", he said.
Meanwhile Telangana Government has also decided to delink the issue of financial assistance to the students with the admission process. It means that for present the students will have to take admission on the basis of their academic and caste certificates and submit their income certificates separately to seek the financial assistance under the new scheme FAST.
The State Government held a meeting with the representatives of private engineering colleges in Telangana to elicit their views on the issue of fee reimbursement.
Officials told the college managements that the Government will give them an undertaking of paying the fee of the deserving students later. The private colleges are unhappy that the state government has not paid them the old arrears of Rs 1300 crore towards the fee reimbursement. Assuring that the arrears will be cleared the state government has sought the time for paying this year's fee of the economically weak students.