The High Court of Karnataka on Friday disposed of the writ appeals in the issue pertaining to repeater students of K-CET 2021 after a consensus among the parties on the calculation of marks suggested by an expert committee. The expert committee, appointed by the state government, has suggested a normalisation procedure to deduct an average of six marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics subjects from the 2021 CET repeater students' scores.
The committee, headed by B Thimme Gowda, vice-chairman of the Karnataka State Education Council, has adopted the Root Mean Square (RMS) method for the purpose. “On the basis of the said second method (RMS), the state is permitted to issue an order assigning the rankings. It is clarified that the marks obtained in second PU 2021 for UGCET 2022-23 shall be calculated only for the purpose of CET and shall have no further effect," a division bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Alok Aradhe observed while disposing of the writ appeals filed by the state government and the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA).
After applying the RMS method, the committee has suggested that the qualifying marks for the 2021 batch be deducted by an average of six in physics, five in chemistry and seven in mathematics. This would result in a total deduction of six marks for 100 qualifying marks. The committee had also suggested increasing seats in IT-related branches by about 10% to bring a level-playing field as even after the normalisation, ranking of the Covid-19 batch may affect that of the 2022 batch.
On September 3, 2022, a single bench had directed the authorities to redo the CET rankings for admission to undergraduate courses in Engineering and Technology for the academic year 2022-23 by considering both PU and CET marks in a 50:50 ratio. The single bench had directed the authorities to conduct the redo exercise strictly in accordance with rule 3 and 4 of the Karnataka Selection of Candidates for Admission to Government seats in Professional Educational Institutions Rules, 2006 and without reference to proviso inserted by a government order dated September 1, 2021.
The state government contended that the repeater students were generously awarded marks in 2021 since PU examinations were not conducted due to Covid-19 pandemic while the fresher students did appear for the PU examinations in 2022.