Hyderabad: The unrest among students and unemployed in Telangana due to delays in issuing new job notifications has taken a new twist.

The Telangana state government sees a ‘conspiracy’ by coaching centres run by Seemandhra managements behind this unrest with an intention of blocking proposed exam reforms initiated by TSPSC, besides provoking students against the Telangana government to bring pressure on it for conducting exams in the old format that was in force in the undivided state.

The government is moving closer to bringing a legislation to regulate coaching centres, which are collecting fees ranging from Rs 75,000 to Rs 2 lakh to train students for various recruitment exams.

The industry is valued at Rs 1,000 crore per annum but the government is not getting any revenue from taxes since no approvals are needed from the government to set up or run coaching centres.

The recruitment exams’ coaching market is dominated by Seemandhra managements, who own dozens of coaching centres in and around Hyderabad. Areas such as Ashok Nagar, Dilsukhnagar, Mehdipatnam and Ameerpet etc. are hubs for such coaching centres.

OUJAC, TSJAC students are strongly opposing the hefty fees collected by coaching centres and the holding of classes in function halls using public address systems, by admitting thousands of students at a time.

They have also complained several times to the government about coaching centres not appointing qualified faculty, not adhering to student-teacher ratios and not having even class rooms to accommodate students and even roping in ‘bouncers’ like pubs and bars to attack them whenever they protest at the centres.

The Telangana government, which had remained quiet on this so far, has now started to feel the heat with the series of agitations being conducted by students in front of the Secretariat. It all started when the Telangana government constituted an expert committee recently to change the syllabus by including “Telangana specific content” and removing “Andhra content”, besides changing the exam pattern.

This sparked intense agitations by students, putting the government in a fix.

The government asked the intelligence department to inquire into this issue, which submitted a report that Seemandhra coaching centres in Hyderabad were sponsoring the agitation programmes to bring pressure on the government to conduct exams in the old format.

The intelligence officials submitted that the coaching centres would suffer losses if any changes were made at this juncture since they had already collected fees from students and trained them as per the old syllabus and format.

“We are a new state born just eight months ago. The TSPSC is yet to become fully operational. Yet students are agitating for notifications here. On the other hand, APPSC is an established body. Despite this, they have failed to issue a single notification. But there are no agitations in front of APPSC or Andhra Pradesh Secretariat. This clearly shows that the Seemandhra coaching industry in Hyderabad, which is minting hundreds of crores from students, is egging on students against the Telangana government to block exam reforms,” said a senior official of the Higher Education department.