And the Red Tape goes on...

Pvt edu plan to be taken up at state cabinet meet

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: The long-pending proposal to set up a regulatory authority to frame policy guidelines on admissions, reservations and fee structure for private professional educational institutes is likely to be taken up for discussion by the state cabinet at its weekly meeting scheduled on Tuesday.
The state higher and technical education department, headed by Dilip Valse-Patil, has tabled the proposal, which aims at governing matters related to professional institutes offering courses on management, engineering and architecture.
The proposal is to equip the regulatory body with statutory powers, akin to the Maharashtra Energy Regulatory Commission (MERC), making the decisions taken by the fivemember regulatory authority binding on the institutions.
It is proposed to enact a new law to be called the Maharashtra Private Professional Education Institutions (regulation of admissions and fees) Act detailing its powers and its jurisdiction.
On two earlier occasions, the state cabinet had deferred taking any decision on this proposal as most of the educational institutes belong to or are closely associated with political leaders in the Democratic Front (DF) coalition.
The proposal is to appoint the chairperson of the regulatory authority. He will be assisted by four other members that are not directly or indirectly associated with private colleges.
The chairperson will be any person who has worked as principal secretary or as vicechancellor of a university. The authority will also have jurisdiction over all aided, unaided and also over minority or non-minority institutes affiliated to an university.