An aspirant wanting to join one of the two centrally sponsored biotechnology courses offered by Anna University has approached the Madras High Court again claiming that the university had so far filled only 12 of the 45 seats available in M.Tech (Biotechnology) and M.Tech (Computational Biology) courses for the current academic year.
When the writ petition, filed by R. Kuzhali of Dharmapuri, was listed before Justice G. Jayachandran on Wednesday, her counsel A. Saravanan sought a direction to the university to fill all 45 seats this year. He said the university must take sincere steps to get the last date for admissions extended by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
After hearing him, the judge ordered notices returnable, by June 1, to the Centre, the university and the AICTE. The writ petitioner pointed out that the university had initially decided to not admit any student in the two courses this year because it could not decide whether to follow the 69% reservation policy of the State government or the 49.5% reservation policy of the Centre.
When a group of candidates, including her, approached the court challenging the varsity’s decision, the court directed the university to admit the students on the basis of the Centre’s reservation policy.
Thereafter, only six students in each of the two courses were admitted though the sanctioned strength for the M.Tech (Biotechnology) was 25 and that of M.Tech (Computational Biology) was 20.
Stating that she had a bright chance of gaining admission if the remaining 33 seats were also filled, the student insisted upon filling them at the earliest.
