Colleges break rules, 350 careers at stake

Colleges break rules, 350 careers at stake
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

PUNE, NOV 22: Five unrecognised colleges in the State have broken every rule to conduct Diploma in Education (DEd) admissions. Over 350 careers are at stake. And the minister ``rules out any State responsibility'' for the mess.

School Education Minister Ramkrishna More o Tuesday brushed off any State accountability in a blunder that let five DEd colleges admit students without permission from the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE).

While the State had handed over no-objection certificates to these colleges, which were splashed in advertisements beckoning students to pay up the fees, More maintained ``the college managements have duped the students, not the State. The parents and students should have been aware of the official status of the colleges in which they were taking admission.''

A criminal complaint against the Marathi and Hindi medium colleges in Ahmednagar, Mumbai, Sindhudurg and Thane has been lodged by the State, even as three of the college managements have taken their case to the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court.

The fortnight-long stalemate over the DEd scandal lingers, with students on an indefinite chain hunger strike camping outside the Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training (MSCERT).

At a press conference on Tuesday, More labelled the strike as ``emotional blackmail and pressure tactics. If the hunger strike continues, it will be unlawful.''

The only specific assurance announced by the Minister was permission for students that fit into the NCTE eligibility criteria to tackle the respective DEd examinations.

Fresh rules for the DEd academic term from December to November, have drastically reduced the college management's discretion in providing admissions to students outside the respective districts. The quota for outstation students is now reduced from 20 per cent to five per cent, with 95 per cent of the seats reserved for students within the districts.

From the first week of December, a centralised admission procedure for 10,570 DEd seats will begin.