Hyderabad: The Telangana State government is preparing a new comprehensive State Higher Education Plan (SHEP) to present the true picture of the sector in the state and press for funding from the Centre towards capacity building and infrastructure development.

However, the state is running against time as the SHEP has to be readied by the first week of next month. Nearly Rs 1,300 crore is to be received by the state until the end of the current Five Year Plan.

Senior officials said a comprehensive SHEP is being prepared by about the existing infrastructure and the funding they receive. “If you see the Budget, a huge chunk of it goes towards the salaries of the employees and a very small part of it actually goes towards improving infrastructure and capacity building. We want to change that,” said a senior education department official.

Officials say that the SHEP will be prepared in time for the Higher Education Project Approval Board meeting scheduled for the first week of February. The state SHEP will be scrutinised then.

However, the Telangana State Council of Higher Education seems to be missing from action though it is supposed to be the nodal agency for the state. The Telangana State government may also look to limiting the number of colleges affiliated to each university in the state.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad has about 500 colleges affiliated to it. Of these about 300 are engineering colleges. “The optimum number of affiliated colleges under each university is about hundred,” the official said.

On the other hand, AP government is reworking its SHEP with further data in the formats sought by the Union HRD ministry. Andhra Pradesh government is also entitled to receive about Rs 1,700 crore from the NDA government for higher education. “They have asked for the data in specific formats. So we are preparing that,” said APSCHE vice-chairman P. Vijayprakash.