Hyderabad: Providing relief to over 2 lakh Engineering aspirants in the state, the AP High Court on Thursday cleared the decks for the commencement of Eamcet engineering counselling for admission to BE/B.Tech/B.Pharmacy courses for the current academic year (2013-14).
The counselling had been pushed back by nearly two months due to delays in fee fixation and pending cases in the court.
The High Court in its interim orders directed the state government to start the counselling process on August 19 and notify the same in three newspapers each of English, Telugu and Urdu languages.
The court noted that the admission process, whether under merit quota (category-A) or management quota (category-B), must necessarily be based on merit rankings.
Justice Nooty Ramamohana Rao passed these interim orders on a writ plea filed by city student, T. Leela Krishna, seeking directions to the officials concerned for commencing the admission process.
Petitioner’s counsel S. Niranjan Reddy brought to the court’s notice that the counselling process for engineering courses had not commenced though students had passed their two-year Intermediate course in April/May 2013 and had appeared for Eamcet-2013 on May 10, the results for which were announced on June 5.
Start Eamcet  counselling on Aug. 19: HC
Additional advocate general K.G. Krishna Murthy told the court that the Supreme Court had recently considered the application moved by the government by granting extension of the time schedule for commencing the engineering course latest by September 1, 2013.
The AAG added that a few managements of private Engineering colleges had approached the HC and obtained interim relief, preventing the state from regulating both the admission process and the fees liable to be charged by them for management quota seats.
The state had already filed a vacate application which was being considered by the division Bench, he added.
After hearing both sides, the judge directed the state to commence counselling latest by 10.30 am on August 19 as the counselling process for category-A seats takes atleast a week. The process should be undertaken online, he added.
Regarding management quota admissions, the judge said that the college managements should issue notifications in atleast two leading newspapers, inviting applications both in physical format and online.
The AP State Council of Higher Education should also be provided with one set of application forms by each of these colleges for necessary action.
All applications that are received by the managements either in physical form or online should be considered and a merit list should be prepared in descending order. The merit list should be exhibited on the respective websites of the colleges as well as on their notice boards.
Justice Rao also said that the merit list should be made available for scrutiny of the Eamcet convenor (admissions).
He said that admissions for category-B should also be carried out in descending order of merit. This would ensure not only transparency and fairness, but would also serve the larger cause of public interest. The case was adjourned for four weeks.