Lucknow, July 23 (Inditop.com) The Uttar Pradesh government Thursday instructed all privately-run engineering and management colleges to resume reservation of seats for students from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other backward communities.

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the state technical education ministry late Wednesday night.

The reservation was suspended when some private college owners approached the Allahabad High Court May 2009 for a stay after initially agreeing to reservation in 2006.

The stay order resulted in delay in counselling for admissions to 97,536 seats in both state-run and private engineering and management colleges carried out through the State Entrance Examination (SEE) conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU).

The Supreme Court Tuesday after examining the details of the case directed the high court to finally dispose off the matter within the next four weeks, pending which the state government was asked to resume the suspended counselling for the new admissions.

State Principal Secretary (Technical Education) Vrinda Swarup said: “The apex court has clarified that all those institutions which had given their formal consent to implement the reservation policy at a meeting with the government Nov 21, 2008, were in any case not entitled to the stay order granted by the high court.”

“The hon’ble court has also directed us to re-start the counselling that could not be started as per schedule July 16,” Swarup told Inditop.