Maharashtra Govt to Upgrade 7 Polytechnics to Engineering Colleges

Seven Maharashtra Government run polytechnics colleges from different districts are going to be upgraded into engineering colleges with state of the art facilitates report from directorate technical education suggests.

Government polytechnic at Bandra in Mumbai along with 6 other government diploma schools from Amravati, Nagpur, Dhule, Aurangabad, Kolhapur and Nanded districts are in the list.

These engineering colleges will have intake capacity of 60 each where six main branches — mechanical, electrical, computer science, civil, electronics and automobile engineering will be introduced.

But the Polytechnics after upgrade would continue to offer diploma courses in the evening shift while engineering courses would be conducted in the morning shift. The polytechnics teachers who have PhD degrees would be appointed to teach degree courses and promoted at university level and several new teachers would be appointed, the report revealed.

An official from the directorate of technical education department on the condition of anonymity said, "The cost-effective plan is drafted by Directorate of Technical Education after the government's directive last month. This will also boost government diploma schools which are struggling to fill their seats at present.”

“The plan to establish seven government-owned premier centres for technical education aims to offer quality and affordable education in the state which seems to remain elusive till now with a large number of brilliant students flocking to other states and private universities.” He added further.

The upgrade of a polytechnic with six main branches is expected to require Rs10 crore. Starting an engineering college from scratch needs at least Rs80 crore."

There are seven government-run engineering colleges in Maharashtra of which five have attained autonomy. This include VJTI in Mumbai and COEP in Pune — the two most sought after colleges in Maharashtra. Only Avsari (Pune) and Chandarpur colleges are purely under government. While over 70,000 seats out of 1.5 lakh remain vacant in the state every year mostly in private institutes, government colleges have far better occupancy.