Hyderabad: Land exemption to private varsities

Hyderabad: The Telangana government hopes to get a flood of investments in the higher education and professional courses offered by private universities.

As a major step in this direction, the government has promulgated the Telangana Payment State Private Universities (Establishment and Regulations) Amendment Ordinance – 2020. Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan gave her nod to the ordinance on Wednesday.

Highly-placed sources said that the ordinance will give relaxation to the interested private universities to set up the institution in the leased lands. In the earlier Act passed by the government, the private institutions were permitted to open a university only in the lands possessed by the management. It is learnt that several private universities, including a few foreign institutions, had approached the government and expressed their readiness to set up the institutions. Some of them were not ready to buy the lands due to heavy prices in the Greater Hyderabad limits and preferred to take lands on lease first and open the universities. This ordinance is likely to help all such institutions.

Sources said that the universities which get government's clearance will be permitted to start operations from the next academic year. They said that some more relaxations were also being given under the ordinance. However, the government had not divulged the details.

According to the Telangana State Private Universities (Establishment and Regulation) Act, 25 per cent of seats for admissions in the courses undertaken by a university will be exclusively reserved for the students of Telangana on the basis of domicile. The Act also stated that the university should obtain accreditation from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NACC) within five years from the commencement of the programme and courses in the university.