A key meeting to finalise fee hike for engineering colleges and Eamcet engineering counselling schedule will be held at the Secretariat on Thursday.Deputy chief minister C. Damodar Raja Narasimha, who also holds the portfolio of higher education, has convened a meeting with the officials of higher and technical education departments for the purpose.

Some key issues such as slashing NRI quota in engineering colleges from 15 per cent to 5 per cent, checking the menace of brokers during web-based counselling and grading of engineering colleges are on the agenda.

About 250 engineering colleges have sought fee hikes and have submitted proposals to this effect. The government will be careful with this issue since any hike will impose a heavy financial burden on the state exchequer due to the fee reimbursement scheme as about 80 per cent of the students are dependent on the scheme.