Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Dec 13: The state government is taking steps to ensure that students of the College of Engineering and Technology (CET) are able to appear for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2015.
CET got approval in 2013, from the Biju Pattnaik University of Technology (BPUT) to which the college is affiliated, to increase its intake capacity in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes from the 2013-14 academic year. However, the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has yet to give its approval for the additional intake and this eventually led to the students being debarred from availing Gate scholarship.
“After the approval from BPUT, we started nine postgraduate programmes in the ongoing academic year with an intake capacity of 18 students in each branch. As the increased intake of students was not approved by AICTE, they were debarred from Gate scholarship,” said CET principal Dr SP Mohanty.
In the past two academic years, the college increased its intake capacity from 603 to 1,289 with introduction of the new undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
College authorities have urged AICTE to grant approval to the additional intake and the new programmes, but has not yet got a favourable response. As such, the state government has recently asked AICTE to grant approval so that the students are able to avail the scholarship this year.