In an exceptional move, the All Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to not permit new engineering colleges from the academic year 2020-21 and review creation of new capacity every two years after that.
AICTE Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe said the Council has accepted the recommendation of the government committee headed by IIT-Hyderabad chairman BVR Mohan Reddy and that only requests from existing engineering institutes to either start programmes in new technologies or convert current capacity in traditional engineering disciplines to emerging new technologies will be entertained from next year.
As for approving additional seats in existing institutions, the AICTE will only grant approvals based on the capacity utilisation of the institute concerned. For the same reason, the committee had urged the AICTE to introduce undergraduate engineering programmes exclusively for artificial intelligence, block-chain, robotics, quantum computing, data sciences, cyber-security, 3D printing and design. All the recommendations of the BVR Mohan Reddy committee have been made public in the AICTE’s approval handbook of 2019-20, which according to Sahasrabudhe, effectively means the report has been accepted by the Council.
Nevertheless, with enrolment remaining nearlystill, the AICTE appointed a committee headed by former NASSCOM chairperson and industrialist BVR Mohan Reddy to come up with a medium and short-term perspective plan for expansion in engineering education.
