Congress demands change in counselling schedule

Hyderabad, July 5 (INN): Leader of Opposition in Telangana State Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Tuesday demanded that the State Government bring changes in schedule of Eamcet counseling in view of Eid-ul-Fitr, likely to be celebrated on July 7.

In his letter to Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, Shabbir Ali said that the Telangana State Council of Higher Education has erred in scheduling the Certificate Verification and Option Exercise for Web-Based Counseling for admissions into engineering colleges for candidates who qualified in EAMCET-2016.

"While the schedule for Certificate Verification for those who have not verified earlier has been kept on 5th and 6th July, the Schedule for Exercising Options is from 5th to 11th July, 2016. It includes 7th July, 2016, (Thursday) which happens to be Eid-ul-Fitr. Candidates having ranks from 45001 to 90000 will be able to exercise options from 7th to 8th July. As you are aware that Eid-ul-Fitr is the biggest festival for all Muslims and therefore, hundreds of parents and students would be put to extreme hardship if Exercising Options is kept on 7th July, 2016. They will be forced to either skip Exercising Option or cancel their Eid-ul-Fitr celebrations," Shabbir Ali said.

Therefore, Shabbir Ali urged the Chief Minister to direct the Department of Technical Education and TSCHE to re-schedule the Exercising Options for successful EAMCET-2016 candidates seeking admissions into engineering colleges.

Meanwhile, addressing a press conference along with Congress MLCs Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy and Santosh Kumar, Shabbir Ali slammed the TRS Government for completely neglecting the Education Sector. He said both number of colleges and seats have come down under TRS rule. As against 337 engineering colleges in 2014-15, the colleges were reduced to 249 in 2015-16 and this year, the government approved only 158 colleges. Similarly, the number of engineering seats has come down from 1.93 lakh in 2014-15 to just 79,705 this year. Similarly, the number of Pharma Colleges and seats has declined by more than half.

Shabbir Ali said that the State Government was totally responsibly for tarnishing the image of Telangana as Education Hub. He demanded that the government initiate immediate steps to revive and strengthen education sector. He also demanded immediate release of fee reimbursement dues.