At a time when Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan is trying to rein in private medical colleges from selling their quota of seats, the state government seems to be helping the colleges on not implementing the policy of transparency in admissions.

The government informed the High Court on Wednesday that it could make private colleges follow the prescribed transparent admission policy only from 2013-2014, thus giving the colleges license to sell seats for the current academic year.

The HC had itself prescribed the transparency policy way back in 2007. It included giving prior notification and wide publicity regarding admissions by colleges and putting the merit list in the public domain.

The government’s decision to buy time is significant coming as it did after a delegation of private medical college heads called on CM N. Kiran Kumar Reddy and explained their point of view.

The decision also nullified the efforts of the Governor, who in his capacity as the university chancellor, summoned medical education minister K. Murali a few days ago and expressed concern over the lack of transparency in admissions.

The government seems to be merely echoing the private college managements which have declared that the admissions for this year were already over. This is in sharp contrast to the stand taken by Dr T. Venugopala Rao, registrar of NTR University of Health Sciences, that it was still possible to control admissions for the current academic year.

In an affidavit submitted to the HC, the registrar categorically said the private college managements cannot begin admissions without the guidelines on maintaining transparency, which are yet to be issued by the university.

The affidavit also revealed that the government is sitting on the request of the university to “give appropriate guidelines to ensure more transparency in admissions under management quota.” What makes things worse is that the government has gone to the extent of removing the standing counsel of NTR University of Health Sciences, Mr D. Nagarjuna Babu, for filing the affidavit on behalf of the Registrar. Sources told this newspaper that the government replaced Mr Babu as he filed the affidavit at a time when the top brass of the administration directed the advocate-general to seek time to enforce transparency. Special bench to expedite hearings Acting Chief Justice P.
C. Ghose has constitut ed a special bench to combine all the cases pertaining to medical admissions and expe dite the hearings as any delay due to litiga tion may hamper the students' careers.