Online CET aims at checking admission fraud
With counselling for undergraduate professional courses set to go online from this year, the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) hopes the move will put an end to the practice of blocking seats by colleges that has resulted in several meritorious students failing to secure admissions each year.
Highly placed sources reveal that the total intake approved for each course/college will be posted on the website when counselling begins, letting students know the exact number of seats available and helping them exercise their choices better. The colleges failing to specify the exact number of seats under the CET quota will be debarred from the seat-selection process, which means they can neither fill the seats under the CET quota nor add them to the management quota. Simply put, the seats will remain vacant.
Sources said it would be a welcome change from the present system under which the KEA is left clueless whether a student has joined the college of his or her choice.
Taking advantage of the loopholes, several institutions lure meritorious students into choosing the seats only to make the candidates surrender them later. The managements later claim the CET allotted seat during reconciliation.
Deccan Herald has learnt that the new process will not spare medical colleges from concealing their total intake. Engineering colleges, specifically those in the rural areas will, however, have slightly relaxed norms as many of them fail to attract adequate students.
A source said the online counselling model would be based on the one adopted by the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE). The KEA will even use the same software as employed by the AIEEE. It is also likely that the process will be hosted by KEA’s present website.
“Except for incorporating details of category-wise reservation, our system will be like the AIEEE,” sources said. The National Informatics Centre has the sufficient number of programmers to deal with the possible increase in traffic.
To ensure smooth passage of the web-based process, the KEA will conduct trial runs after the CET gets over on May 5. The website will work on a near real-time basis. Information will be updated daily and students will be able to access it after some time.
While the web-based seat selection process is expected to bring relief to a large number of students, there are concerns over potential glitches in the website and its possible crashing due to real-time usage by several hundreds of students.
There are also fears that the system will be difficult to use for students from the rural areas. According to sources the KEA system would be student-friendly.
