AICTE grants affiliation to 545 new technical institutions

The All India Council of Technical Education, which has revamped its approval system, on Tuesday allowed 545 new technical educational institutions to offer professional courses including engineering, management and MCA, from 2010-11 academic session onwards
The approval by the AICTE executive council will see the total seats in various streams go up by one lakh and the number of technical institutes in the country touching 7906, official sources said. Out of the 545 approved institutes, nearly 60 per cent are in management followed by 30 per cent in engineering and the rest in architecture, pharmacy and hotel management, the sources said.At present 7,361 technical educational institutions are offering courses to nearly eight lakh students every year. A total of 2,176 new institutions had applied for approval from AICTE this year. Nearly 1,600 applications were rejected after the institutes were found lacking in several counts, sources said.

“Some of the institutions did not meet the minimum requirement of land and building while another few applicant institutions did not pursue their request for approval,” they said.
The institutes can start offering courses from the session commencing from July.
The AICTE had given approval to 1131 new institutes last year. Incidentally, the AICTE, which has been in news for wrong reasons, has revamped its approval system from this year. It shifted to online registration process and relaxed land requirements for new institutes. AICTE has launched a new web portal which acts as a single window system for processing of the applications of the institutions for approval. The aspiring institutes had applied through the web portal and a committee from AICTE inspected the institutes. On the basis of report of the committee, the executive council gave approval to these institutes.