Andhra amends admission rules under non-local quota, retains them for local students

The Andhra Pradesh government has amended the rules for admission to higher educational institutions in the state, doing away with the 15 per cent non-local reservation and keeping it entirely for students from the state.

Starting with the 2025-26 academic year, students from other states, including Telangana, cannot avail admission under the non-local quota.

With the fresh orders, admissions to engineering, technology, pharmacy, architecture, Pharma D, business administration, computer applications, law, education and physical education courses will be allotted to students of Andhra Pradesh, including from certain categories such as children of Central government employees, among others.

“To protect the interests of the students hailing from the state of Andhra Pradesh, appropriate measures have to be taken in admission to undergraduate, post-graduate and PhD courses…,” a recent government order said.

According to the order, the southern state followed a common admission process, which also involved admitting students from Telangana under the non-local quota for 10 years after the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh.

However, this common admission period ended on June 2, 2024, in all government, private, aided and unaided higher and technical educational institutions.

Therefore, it is necessary to amend the admission rules for a plethora of courses, the order said.

“Upon the receipt of several representations from the parents and students to do justice to Andhra Pradesh students for admission to various courses and also to avoid the legal complications in the admission process, the government has decided to issue amendments to the admission rules,” it said.

Students from the erstwhile districts of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East and West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur and Prakasam fall under the jurisdiction of Andhra University (AU) and become non-local candidates under the purview of SV University.

Likewise, students from the erstwhile districts of Anantapur, Kurnool, Chittoor, Kadapa and Nellore come under the purview of SV University and will be treated as non-local candidates by Andhra University.

According to the new order, local candidates are eligible to avail 85 per cent seats, while the remaining 15 per cent can be filled under the non-local quota.

In case of state-wide universities and institutions, which do not fall under either AU or SV University, and are controlled by the state government, 85 per cent local seats will be reserved for students falling under the purview of these two varsities in the ratio of 65.6 per cent and 34.3 per cent, respectively.

The remaining 15 per cent seats under the non-local quota for statewide universities and institutions will follow the same formula as mandated under the AU and SV University's method of sharing their non-local quota, the order said.