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Admission sans ATA invalid: Architects Institute

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI Aug. 5. The State chapter of the Indian Institute of Architects has asked all institutions, including universities and deemed universities, which are providing architecture education, to compulsorily conduct the Aptitude Test for Architecture (ATA) in keeping with existing guidelines, for all admissions including under the management, minority, sponsored or NRI quotas to the five-year B.Arch.

In a letter addressed to heads of the architecture faculty, R. Ramaraju, convener of the IIA-TN's Professional Service Board, said the Madras High Court had upheld the Council of Architecture's (CoA) norms and guidelines, saying they were mandatory, having statutory force.

The ATA, the letter said, was not an entrance test to select candidates but was a minimum qualification for admission. The ATA qualification could be obtained only from a competent authority as was specifically spelt out in Item 5 of the Guidelines on Admission to full-time B.Arch. As per the guidelines, the ATA carried an equal weightage with the qualifying examination. The syllabus for the test should follow what was prescribed in the CoA guidelines. It should be conducted only by the authorities designated by law — in Tamil Nadu, the Anna University for all constituent and affiliated colleges and deemed universities for their respective departments.

The letter also said that from the next year, a common ATA for the entire State might be planned (to be conducted in December or January next) and accepted by all authorities concerned.

Architecture was a distinct discipline, which had exclusive and different requirements for admission, different from engineering. As per the CoA's guidelines (item 6), counselling for candidates who had applied for admission to B.Arch should be held independent of the counselling for engineering, pharmacy, medicine and other courses.

As the judgment had upheld the CoA's minimum standards and the guidelines as mandatory requirement, any admission made now or earlier under the management quota (without conduct of the ATA) would lose validity. Moreover, the ATA was required to be conducted only by the competent authority and any test conducted otherwise by individual colleges was liable to be declared unauthorised and invalid.

So, the letter said, the private managements could inform the prospective candidates to appear for the ATA conducted by the Anna University, as otherwise they could lose their eligibility as well as admission.

Mr. Ramaraju also urged the CoA to formulate a system to monitor and check the admission process "here onwards".

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