Puducherry Obtains Its First Female Engineering College

By: WE Staff | Tuesday, 26 July 2022

As the first women's engineering college opens in the Union Territory (UT), women's education will advance. In Lawspet, Puducherry, the current Women's Polytechnic College has been transformed into an engineering college.

A government announcement states that the college will provide BTech programmes with an enrollment of 60 students each in Architectural Assistantship, Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics and Communication, and Electrical and Electronics Engineering. With the same inflow, BCom will be included as well. CENTAC would launch admissions for the academic year 2022–2023 (Centralised Admission Committee). For the UT, this is their third engineering college.

After enrollment began to decline gradually, the government made the decision to renovate the polytechnic college. In the most recent academic year, which had a total enrollment of 190 students, only 50 applicants were accepted. The college should have had 570 students enrolled, however there are currently only 200.

The new college was announced by the minister of education, A Namassivayam, during the previous budget session.

Under the Conversion of Polytechnics into Engineering Colleges programme of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), its infrastructure was updated with funds from the Central government totaling Rs 2 crore. The government asked the AICTE for permission because almost 90% of the faculty met the requirements.

On July 10, the AICTE issued instructions allowing the improvement following four rounds of inspection. A connection to Puducherry Technical University would exist. According to a representative, only BCom will be associated with Pondicherry University.

Girls would still be able to enrol in diploma programmes at the neighbouring, coed Motilal Nehru Government Polytechnic (MNGP) College. Last year, MNGP only admitted 251 students, despite the intake needing to be 400. According to an official, doing things this way will result in greater resource utilisation and less duplication of fund usage.