Bowing to pressure from managements of top engineering colleges in which there is huge demand for management quota seats, the state government on Tuesday backtracked on its decision to conduct online admissions for management quota seats to ensure merit and transparency in admissions and to check indiscriminate sale of seats by collecting huge donations and capitation fee up to `15 lakh.

The state government on Tuesday issued orders prescribing guidelines for management quota admissions in engineering and pharmacy colleges for this year. Strangely, there is no mention about conducting online admissions in the GO Ms No. 60 and 61 issued for non-minority and minority engineering colleges respectively.

Deputy chief minister Damodar Raja Narasimha had recently announced that the government has decided to conduct online admissions for management quota seats and it will not allow sale of seats in top colleges at any cost. He even went on to threaten the managements of returning the donations to students they had already collected to book seats in advance.

Now, with the issue of fresh orders without any mention of online admissions proved that his words were only an eye-wash. The orders just talk about colleges maintaining transparency by posting the details of students who apply for management quota seats and the merit list of students who were selected.

These norms are very much in force since 2009, when orders were issued as per AP High Court directions, but never implemented in letter and spirit and colleges continue to resort to sale of seats without issuing even applications for students as all the admissions happen through brokers and educational consultants.

This newspaper had reported about the tricky situation. State order on fee challenged in HC A writ petition was filed in the High Court on Tuesday by G. Panduranga Reddy, organising secretary of ABVP, challenging the GO issued by the state government on August 25 by notifying the fee structure to the engineering colleges in the state. The petitioner urged the court to direct the AFRC to fix uniform fee code of `35,000 to the engineering courses for the academic year 2012-13.