Anna univ to resume MTech courses, create more seats

Anna univ to resume MTech courses, create more seats

Sureshkumar.K@timesgroup.com

Chennai:09.02.2021

Two weeks after making a controversial announcement that it was suspending admissions to two centrally sponsored MTech courses, Anna University told the Madras high court on Monday that it would recommence the academic programmes.

Nine supernumerary seats will be created in MTech Biotechnology and MTech Computational Biology, and those students will not be able to claim stipend of about ₹12,000 to ₹12,500 a month. The Centre, however, will offer the stipend to students admitted under its 49.5% quota of seats.

The courses were suspended due to disagreement between the Tamil Nadu government and the Union government over the state’s 69% reservation or the Centre’s 49.5% reservation in admissions.

HC asks AICTE to figure out way to add nine seats

When the state insisted on its quota policy, the Centre refused to fund the sponsored courses, leading to the university cancelling admissions to the courses.

A prospective student, Chitra, then moved the court seeking resumption of admissions to the reputed courses – M Tech Biotechnology and M Tech Computational Biology. Her counsel A Saravanan submitted that readmitting students was imperative as quantum of reservation could be argued separately. However, the compromise made by Anna University and Centre came not before Justice B Pugalendhi made a loaded query about whether the Centre funded reservation or the MTech courses.

Vijayakumar, counsel for the university, said the court must take an undertaking from students being accommodated in the supernumerary seats that they would not claim stipend during the course period. “Paying stipend of ₹12,000 a month for these nine students would be difficult as there are more than 2,000 postgraduate students studying without scholarship in the university,” he said. This apart, approval must be obtained from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for creation of nine additional seats, he added.

Special government pleader E Manoharan, representing the TN government, pointed out that the University Grants Commission (UGC) had made it very clear to all universities, deemed universities and other grant-in-aid institutions to follow the reservation prescribed by the state governments, and added, “there is no difficulty for Anna University to comply with the rule of reservation.”

Recording the submissions, Justice Pugalendhi directed the counsel for AICTE to get instructions on obtaining approval for creating nine more seats, and whether there is any prescribed cutoff date for PG biotechnology courses at Anna University. He then adjourned the hearing to February12.