chandigarh the all india council of technical education aicte is all set to tighten the noose around errant engineering colleges flourishing in punjab and in the periphery of chandigarh the apex body which governs hundreds of technical and management institutes in the country plans to cancel affiliation of belowstandard colleges and impose various restrictions on them there is a lot of scope in the field of technical education and we always encourage colleges that have the potential to deliver at the same time we are cautious about the mushrooming belowmark colleges in the region s s mantha chairman of aicte told toi we are conducting surprise raids in the colleges and acting immediately on complaints colleges found lacking will be closed down we will also reduce the number of sanctioned seats we have not ordered closure of any college in punjab so far but in haryana twothree colleges have been closed in the last few months he added mantha said that aicte is concerned about the hundreds of seats lying vacant in various engineering colleges in punjab and other states we have analysed the situation and found that 15 to 20 seats are vacant in colleges in rural areas and that too in certain branches like information technology and production we have observed that students are gradually drifting away from information technology and have started opting for core branches stated mantha we are getting queries from colleges who want to shut their it branches and demand allocation of more seats in other streams but this is not easy for us as we have to maintain a healthy balance last year we had received such pleas from around 1000 colleges he pointed out box changing trends the phenomenon of vacant seats is haunting aicte they have also received requests from some state governments not to grant permission to start new technical institutions as already thousands of seats are lying vacant in those states mantha said they have received requests from rajasthan maharashtra and andhra pradesh in a bid to promote research culture and enhance interaction between industry and academicians aicte will select 50 colleges across the country these colleges will provide 3000 square feet area to nearby mncs or industry to open knowledge centres the colleges will be selected by early 2012 aicte has also allocated rs 10 crore for the faculty of technical institutes who want to go aboard for research programmes they have also recommended foreign ejournals to all institutions