The AICTE, established under the AICTE Act, 1987, has the authority to prescribe minimum norms for entry into technical institutions, and the State cannot lower the standards set by AICTE.

1. It is rather unfortunate that the State of Tamil Nadu represented by its Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Higher Education Department, should come up with a writ petition of this nature. In this writ petition, they sought to challenge the regulations framed by the All India Council for Technical Education (for short AICTE) in prescribing minimum norms for admission into engineering courses and they wanted to lower the marks further.

2. The AICTE by its communication, dated 11.7.2011 had informed that entry level qualification for under graduate programs approved by the Council was reviewed in its executive committee meeting held on 28.6.2011. Following the decision taken in the meeting, a notification was issued on 04.07.2011 redefining the entry level qualifications for technical programmes. As per the revised norms, the minimum eligibility for under graduate programmes is 45% for the general category and for the reserved category students, it had been fixed as 40%. The redefined norms of minimum eligibility marks prescribed for the year 2011-2012 was also incorporated in the Approval Process Handbook for the year 2012-2013 under Appendix I, Serial Nos.1 and 2 of item No.1.1. However, the State Government had fixed its own norms for minimum eligibility marks for admission to First year and second year lateral entry courses for the year 2011-2012 and had redefined the AICTE norms made applicable for the year 2012-2013 fixing 50% aggregate in relevant subjects for other communities and 45% aggregate in relevant subjects for Backward class and 40% aggregate in relevant subjects for MBC and denotified community and 35% aggregate in relevant subjects for Scheduled caste Arunthathiyinar and SC and ST.

3. According to the State Government, by prescription of qualification as 45% for other communities and 40% for reserved categories, there has been vacancies in engineering colleges in the State of Tamil Nadu. The last five years statistics from the year 20072008 to 2011-2012 showed that there were several seats going vacant. For the sanctioned intake of 2,26,034 for the year 2011-2012, the seats reserved at the rate of 18% for SC and SC(A) was 40,686, whereas there were vacancies of 22,865. Similarly, for scheduled tribes, the seats reserved at the rate of 1% was 2260, but there were vacancies of 1873. Therefore, the AICTE had not taken into account the meagre representation of these weaker sections of the society in the Technical education. The ground reality showed that large number of seats earmarked for these communities fell vacant. Even mere pass criterion was fixed as minimum eligibly marks for the candidates belonging to SC(A), SC and ST communities. Therefore, prescribing uniform marks of 40% for all reserved categories is not consistent with the ground reality.

4. It was also stated that various factors contributed the standards of technical education, i.e., infrastructure facilities in the institution, qualification and quality of the teaching faculties, staff-student ratio, curriculum, industry-institute collaboration. These factors are primary requirements for ensuring standards rather than the marks obtained by the student at the time of admission alone. Students once enter the college, they work hard and obtain good marks and they cannot be denied the opportunity as they come from a downtrodden background. In the engineering course, the minimum pass percentage in degree level has been fixed at 50%. Both students who were admitted under the general category as well as reserved category will have to get minimum 50% marks for qualifying in the degree examinations like any other student. That being so, when at the degree level all students are required to fulfill the same prescribed minimum criterion, thereby maintaining the standard of education, the academic record of the candidate at the degree level is a true measure of quality of technical education and not the admission criteria at +2 level.

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