Despite all-India rank 640 in the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) in 2008 (replaced by JEE later) and all-India rank 5 in the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) in 2013, Triveni Prasad Nanda, a graduate from the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Bhopal, faces an uncertain future.

The Bhopal school and SPA Vijaywada were established in 2008 by the Central government as ‘institutes of national importance’. Like Prasad, hundreds of other meritorious students, too, were drawn to the schools to pursue degree and master’s degree courses in architecture.

When the first batches of more than 120 of BArch students in both institutes, admitted in 2008, passed out in 2013, they found – to their horror – that both schools did not have degree granting status. The second batch which has passed out this year shares a similar plight.

“As we did not have a degree certificate, the Council of Architecture (CoA) refused to give us a registration number that would allow us to practice as architects. So I chose to go for a master’s and secured AIR 5 in GATE. Then, on the written assurance of the SPA Bhopal that I would get the degree certificate, I got admitted to IIT Kharagpur and will complete my master’s in 2015. However, by that time if the Central government does not pass an Act in the Parliament to empower the two SPAs with degree granting status, all my hard work and money will go waste,” says Prasad.

According to officials of the two SPAs, the fate of around 1,000 meritorious students hangs in balance as the MHRD has yet to pass an act to empower these two SPAs with  degree conferring status.