State Govt negligence

Hyderabad February 19: Many of the students move out of the State to private and deemed universities elsewhere for 'better' education and employment opportunities thereafter, the higher education authorities are clueless on the number of such students and the reasons why they are doing so.

The administration is caught unawares when Telugu students are violently attacked or when they commit suicide. The recent incident of a Khammam student committing suicide in Haryana was one such example, even as the memory of clashes between Telugu students and locals at the NIT campuses in Manipur and Srinagar last year was still fresh.

Surprisingly, even after such incidents, the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) has not made any attempt to gather information on Telugu students pursuing higher education in other States.

When incidents where students’ lives at a risk take place, officials are completely clueless about how to handle the situation. Even the consolidated data of NITs and IITs was not available with the TSCHE.

Parents say officials must maintain some kind of record of the details of students so that swift action can be to be taken. "The data also helps the government analyze why they were moving out when the State itself has so many seats going vacant in all disciplines," says Ramchandram, whose niece is pursuing engineering in Lovely Professional University (LPU), Chandigarh.

Parmesh, whose brother is studying in NIT Manipur, recollected the tension his family had to go through when locals clashed with Telugu students. "Tracking the students involved or those affected would be easy for the administration if they maintain the record," he says.

Some of the popular private institutes thronged by Telugu students include Vellore Institute of Technology, Sathyabama University, SRM University, Manipal University, LPU, Amity University, Amrita and Shiv Nadar apart from IITs, IIITs, and NITs.