Minister for Information Technology, Youth Services and Sports and Technical Education, Molvi Imran Raza Ansari today called for creating awareness about the diploma courses being offered by the Polytechnic Colleges.Ansari was speaking at a joint meeting of the state technical education department and representatives of private polytechnic colleges, where he stressed the need to make polytechnics proactive in hunting and harnessing skills of the youth.The Minister said the move will benefit students of the far-flung areas and help them to stay updated about these Polytechnic courses. “Students from far flung areas are rarely using internet and barely have access to newspapers,” Ansari said.The Minister directed the officers for establishing the team of nodal officers and called for maximum utilization of the district level resources for ensuring that the desiring students get admission in diploma courses.One of the issues raised by the delegation was regarding the admission into the polytechnic colleges within the stipulated time frame as laid down by the All India Council for Technical Education. They urged the Minister to impress upon the BOPEE to fill up the seats before 31 July so that any seats remaining vacant thereafter could be filled up by the State Board of Technical Education and the BOPEE through a joint mechanism.
While stating that the government is the facilitating agency, the Minister assured the delegation that the filling up of the left out seats in private polytechnic colleges will be taken on priority basis.“There was a time in past when youth of this state would line up before unemployment centres to register their names,” he said. “One of the reasons behind that disheartening trend was the lackluster approach adopted by our polytechnics. Now, we need to change that by flipping the image of the polytechnics for the overall good of the society.”“Polytechnics should play a positive role to train and place students in right jobs by organizing campus recruitments,” Mr Ansari told the meeting. “It goes without saying how polytechnics are doing wonders in many parts of the world,” he said.Ansari directed the officers to find a middle-ground with BOPEE so that issue regarding vacant seats in polytechnics will be sorted out and a calendar will be followed by State Board of Technical Education and BOPEE on pattern of AICTE that conducts exams within a stipulated time frame.“Already many youth left their government and overseas jobs to start their own entrepreneurship ventures in State,” he said. “We must encourage others to follow this positive trend by creating right training facilities and centres in our polytechnics.” The Minister also directed the officials for conducting academic audit to check the faculty, infrastructure and standardization of both government and private polytechnic colleges so that quality in education cannot be compromised at any cost.The meeting was attended by Commissioner Secretary Technical Education, Sanjeev Verma, Director Technical Education, Shabnam Kamli, officials from Technical Education and heads of various polytechnic colleges.