College of Engineering and Technology in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, April 28: The state government may have increased the student intake at three of its premier tech institutes, but the absence of an approval from the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has left institute authorities worried.

“The technical education department abruptly decided to add a total of about 800-850 seats for three institutes from the coming academic session itself. Many students will surely be interested to take admission in a government college, but when they discover that an AICTE approval on these seats is pending, they might resort to protests,” said a top official of the city-based College of Engineering and Technology (CET), on condition of anonymity.

Besides CET, the number of seats has been increased for Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT) at Burla and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology (IGIT) at Sarang.

Authorities said that the “sudden” seat increase was unwarranted and would lead to confusion among students besides creating “unnecessary disturbance” on campus.

“It could have been done in a phased manner. The extra seats could have been included under the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination only after securing approval from AICTE. If we had more time, we could have arranged for sufficient infrastructure for the increased number of students,” the official said.

Recently, about 150 students of the VSSUT-Burla had staged protests upon finding out that five courses in which they had taken admission did not figure on the AICTE list. A similar agitation was reported from the Government College of Engineering in Kalahandi.

Technical education officers said there was no need for AICTE approval to increase seats and that a university had the discretion to do it. “However, we have applied for approval from AICTE and expect a response from them shortly,” said senior officials of the department.

At VSSUT, the seats have been enhanced from 460 to 780 in various branches.

Seats at IGIT have increased by 120. For civil engineering, chemical engineering, metal and metallurgical engineering subjects, it has been doubled from 30 to 60. Similarly, the intake has been raised from 45 to 60 in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering branches.

The seat strength in CET-Bhubaneswar was increased from 390 to 740 across all core branches.