Just 4 of 3,116 colleges reported right salaries

HYDERABAD: A hike in the tuition fees collected by engineering and other professional colleges in the state looks remote with just four  of the 3,166 colleges submitting nearly proper reports on payment of salaries to their teaching and non-teaching staff to the AP State Council of Higher Education.The APSCHE submitted a report on the reports submitted by the colleges to the Supreme Court on Thursday. The apex court will hear the matter on March 22 but the colleges seem to have lost their argument as they  failed to submit reports to the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee of Andhra Pradesh (AFRC) properly.As for the case, some college managements’ associations had filed about 60 separate batches of petitions in the Supreme Court seeking a hike in the tuition fees considering the rise in salaries as per AICTE’s guidelines and state government’s norms.After hearing, the court asked the colleges to submit a report to the AFRC along with the audit reports of previous two academic years and current academic year expenses up to January to assess the increase in the expenses incurred on running their institutions.Of more than 3,000 professional colleges, only 944 had submitted their reports to AFRC in the prescribed one week’s time which ended on Feb 17. After scrutinising the reports, the AFRC reported to the APSCHE that only four colleges submitted their reports in the prescribed format, claiming that they were paying salaries according to AICTE and state government norms.