| More controversy about NATA, citing in full. especially
| see the litigation trail (msg03181.shtml on Enaction-L)
| should anyone care to get official statements from the two sides?
ref:
http://mail.architexturez.net/+/In-Enaction/archive/msg03181.shtml
ref:
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=244658
STUDENTS SEEKING ADMISSION TO J J COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE & FOUR OTHERS
WILL NOT SUFFER, ASSURES STATE
‘We will not take cognisance of council letter’
Mihika Basu
Mumbai, July 06: FOR once, a tough stand taken by the state government
against the Council of Architecture (CoA) will come as a breather to
aspiring students of architecture.
A day after Newsline reported that the CoA in a notification dated June
28 had frozen the intake (read admissions) at prestigious city
institutes like J J College of Architecture in Mumbai and Rachna Sansad
Academy of Architecture, Additional Chief Secretary (higher and
technical education), Joyce Shankaran, categorically said “we will not
take cognisance of the notice issued by the council”.
“The state-government’s common entrance test (CET) has kickstarted the
admission process and there’s no looking back,” added Shankaran.
The other institutes where intake has been frozen by CoA include BKPS
College of Architecture and Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Architecture
in Pune, and VNIT in Nagpur.
CoA president Vijay Sohoni said: “Other states have gone for NATA
(National Aptitude Test in Architecture), so why can’t Maharashtra?
Their CET is not acceptable to us.”
The dispute started several months ago when the state government refused
to accept NATA at government and government-aided colleges for
admissions to Bachelor of Architecture (BArch), which was made mandatory
by CoA from 2007 onwards.
This was followed by a Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD)
letter which said that “making it (NATA) compulsory for all architecture
institutes in India is illegal”.
The results for the common entrance test taken by around 970 students,
including approximately 400 in and around Mumbai and Pune, will be
declared on July 9.
The test was conducted at three government-aided colleges and nine
(affiliated) unaided colleges in the state.
Further, even as the state government is planning to write a letter to
the MHRD to “settle the issue finally”, Shankaran emphasised that
there’s “no urgency at all and we’ve already said that admissions will
also go on as per schedule”.
“By the time the students complete their architecture course, MHRD will
come out with some solution. In any case, they won’t suffer,” she added.
Meanwhile, the state government has found an ally in the Indian
Institute of Technology-Kharagpur which admitted students in its
architecture courses through an entrance exam not “approved by CoA”.
In a public notification on July 6, IIT-Kharagpur has said that as per
the MHRD notification, “CoA cannot make NATA essential for either
admission to architecture courses or mandatory for issue of registration”.