Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on Wednesday said that the suspense over fixing the engineering fees would end in a few days. While speaking to mediapersons, he remained noncommittal about the fees that the state government would reimburse, in case the Admissions and Fee Regulatory Committee fixed different fees for colleges based on their infrastructure and faculty.
While the government is willing to reimburse the full fee if it is fixed at Rs 35,000 per seat, there is an uncertainty in the event of some colleges being allowed to fix higher fees. Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy said that the problem had risen due to the court judgement on the fee structure and added that clarity would emerge in the next few days. Maintaining that the government was committed to helping poor students, the Chief Minister stressed on the need for students maintaining standards in education as they had to become employable after finishing the course.
Aiming a barb at the Telugu Desam and the YSR Congress, the Chief Minister said only Rs 310 crore had been paid towards scholarships in 2003-2004 (the last year of TD rule) and Rs 1,462 crore in 2008-2009 (the last year of YSR’s rule) for fee reimbursement and scholarships against Rs 8,217 crore paid between 2009 and 2012. “We are reimbursing almost Rs 3,500 crore for 25 lakh students,” he added.