Andhra scraps decade-long 15% reservation quota for non-locals in colleges, revamps admission rules

The Andhra Pradesh government has officially discontinued the decade-long provision that allocated 15% of seats in professional, degree, and postgraduate colleges to students from Telangana and other states.

In an order issued by higher education secretary Kona Sasidhar, the state announced that going forward, all seats in its higher education and technical institutions will be designated exclusively for students from Andhra Pradesh.

This marks the end of a policy implemented under Section 95 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2014, which mandated that government and private colleges reserve 15% of seats for non-local students and 85% for local students for a period of 10 years from June 2014.

The shift in admission rules follows a recommendation by the AP State Council of Higher Education, which emphasized the need to safeguard opportunities for Andhra Pradesh students applying to undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs in fields like engineering, pharmacy, technology, law, education, business administration, computer applications, and physical education.

As part of the revised policy, new admission regulations have been introduced for institutions under Andhra University (AU) and Sri Venkateshwara University (SVU).

Students from districts under the AU jurisdiction will be considered locals for AU colleges and will be eligible for 85% of the seats.

The remaining 15% will be available for applicants from the SVU region. A similar rule will apply in reverse for SVU students, who will get 85% of the seats in their region, with 15% open to AU region students.

“Earlier, Osmania University (OU) was also included for admissions, but it has now been removed from AP’s purview. So, from now on, admissions will be made based only on AU and SVU regions, making the entire 100% quota available only to AP students,” Sasidhar said.

According to the order, students who studied in the districts of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, and Prakasam will be classified as local candidates for the AU region.

Those who studied in Anantapur, Kurnool, Chittoor, Kadapa, and Nellore will be considered locals for the SVU region.

To qualify as a local candidate, students must have studied in educational institutions in the designated local area for at least four consecutive academic years or have resided in that area for a minimum of four years immediately before the qualifying examination.

In addition to AU and SVU, a few statewide universities have been identified where students from both regions can apply.

These include Sri Padmavathi Mahila Viswa Vidyalayam (SPMVV), Tirupati; Dravidian University (DU), Kuppam; Dr Abdul Haq Urdu University (AHUU), Kurnool; Dr YSR Architecture & Fine Arts University, Kadapa; Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies; and Silver Jubilee Government College of Cluster University.

In these institutions, 85% of the seats will be filled by local candidates from AU and SVU regions in the proportion of 65.62% and 34.38% respectively.

The remaining 15% will be open to students from both regions based on merit.

This policy shift comes shortly after the Telangana government issued a similar directive on February 27, eliminating the 15% non-local quota in its colleges.

Under Telangana’s revised rules, 85% of seats in the Osmania University (OU) area are now reserved for local students, 5% for Telangana natives residing outside the state for at least 10 years, and 10% for special categories, including children and spouses of Telangana and central government employees posted in the state, as well as those working in recognized institutions.