PANAJI: Shree Rayeshwar Institute of Engineering and Information Technology (RIEIT) in Shiroda, which has Subhash Shirodkar as its chairman, has recently received approval from the state government to introduce two more streams from the academic year 2019-20. The move comes as a surprise as the institute, as per the directorate of technical education records, is the only engineering college in the state with almost 50% of the seats for its three existing engineering streams vacant for the current academic session.Recently, Shirodkar has been in the news after shifting his political loyalty from the Congress to the BJP . Around a year ago, Shirodkar sold around 1.8 lakh sqm of land to the government for Rs 70 crore.Shirodkar, who is the chairman of the Shivgram Education Society (SES) that runs RIEIT, while confirming the decision to introduce two more engineering streams, said, “The earlier three streams will also continue. We have recruited some permanent faculty for the existing programmes and we will hire permanent faculty for the two new programmes once we get all the approvals.”The college currently offers information technology, computer engineering, and electronics and telecommunications engineering. Each stream has 60 seats, of which, overall, less than 100 are taken. RIEIT now wants to add two more streams — mechanical engineering and electrical engineering — from the next academic year. This will up the seats offered at the institute by another 120.After the state government approval, via the directorate of technical education, the process will now begin for RIEIT to seek the All India Council of Technical Education’s (AICTE) approval for the two new BE programmes, besides Goa University affiliation for the same.For the last three academic years Goa University provided RIEIT only provisional affiliation to admit students. This was based on the varasity’s affiliation inquiry committee’s report. In 2017, GU refused to extend affiliation to the institute unless pending salaries of the teachers were paid, which resulted in admissions to the engineering programmes being temporarily halted.The Shivgram Education Society’s Shri Kamaxidevi Homeopathic Medical College, which offers the graduate programme in homeopathy, has also had its admissions temporarily halted due to irregularities reported by university’s affiliation inquiry committee in the recent past.

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