Dietcet counselling yet to come of age.

HYDERABAD : While the entire world is going online for everything, including college admissions, the Department of School Education in Andhra Pradesh is still conducting the District Institute of Education and Training Common Entrance Test (Dietcet) counselling for the 2-year TTC course manually at a lone centre (Keys High School, Secunderabad) in the state capital causing severe inconvenience to thousands of students.

As the officials have been continuing the age old process of manual counselling to fill 12,000 seats, students of far off places like Srikakulam and Chittor districts have to come all the way to Hyderabad for counselling incurring huge expenses.

While the Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) had switched over to online counselling for Eamcet, Icet and other courses long ago, the School Education Department has initiated no measures to simplify it for the convenience of students.

It is going to issue a notification on Saturday asking 50,000 candidates of the total 1.95 lakh qualified in the entrance test to attend counselling in Hyderabad from October 28 to November 12. Under the manual process, it will take 16 long days to fill up 12,000 seats available across the state. Earlier, the officials issued a notification to conduct counselling for 25 days from September 26 to October 20. But they postponed it due to Sakala Janula Samme launched by the Telangana Political Joint Action Committee.

As the academic session has already got delayed due to the general strike, the officials have reduced the number of counselling days to 16 days now.

The APSCHE completed the first phase of Eamcet counselling to fill up nearly 2 lakh convenor quota engineering seats in just 15 days by setting up counselling centres across the state. The Eamcet students can also exercise their web option in the online counselling. But there is no such facility for Dietcet students.

Though the candidates are well aware of the fact that only one out of the four attending the counselling will get a seat, they have to come all the way to Hyderabad from their native places incurring huge expenses.

The candidates have to bring their parents or guardians along with him/her and they will have to stay for an extra day if the counselling is not completed as per schedule.

It means, they are ready to bear additional expenses. Dietcet convenor P Lakshma Reddy said they were planning to introduce online counselling from the next academic year for the benefit of students. A notification will be issued on Saturday itself, he said.

Source : Indian Express