A total of 341 students surrendered BE seats they had taken through the Consortium of Medical, Dental, and Engineering Colleges of Karnataka (Comed-K) after the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) published seat allotment results under stage two of the casual vacancy round at 11 am on Thursday.
At least 60 percent of these students were from Karnataka, Comed-K Chief Executive A S Srikanth said. The total number of surrendered seats this year is 938, up from 898 in 2011. Thursday, 6 pm was the deadline for students to surrender the seats allotted in the first round of counselling from July 26 to August 9.
According to Srikanth, there was “an exodus” of students to surrender the seats after the KEA advanced the declaration of results scheduled for August 25.
The KEA, however, had to make them public two days before following the High Court order on Wednesday.
As per the original timetable, the results were to be declared on August 21. The KEA, however, changed the date to August 25, when it emerged that nearly 200 students were blocking seats. The option entry schedule was also extended to August 22, instead of August 18.
The new dates, however, inconvenienced scores of students, especially those who had taken seats through Comed-K, too.
These students had held their Comed-K seats on in the hope that they would get better and cheaper seats through KEA.
But the KEA’s revised dates upset their plans. While they were required to surrender their Comed-K seats by August 23, their fate through KEA was to be known only by August 25. Thus, they were likely to choose Comed-K seats even if the KEA offered them better seats. The court came to their rescue as it ordered the KEA to publish the results by 11 am, Thursday, so that students were able to choose between KEA and Comed-K seats.
Accordingly, as many as 15,375 seats have been offered to students. Of them, 3,313 were new seats. Engineering accounted for the highest number of seats (14,311), followed by Indian System of Medicine and Homoeopathy (ISM&H) (525), dental (287), architecture (164), and medical (88). A total of 2,512 new seats were offered in engineering, followed by 415 in ISM&H, 162 in dental, 136 in architecture, and 88 in medical stream. Only students of general category were eligible to enter options from August 16 to 22.
According to KEA, 21,992 students entered options. The total number of available seats were 15,375. Besides, as many as 743 students cancelled or surrendered the seats between August 16 and 22. Moreover, 3,498 additional seats were added. After the seat allotment, not a single MBBS seat is left whereas 125 dental, 110 ISM&H, 11,799 engineering, and 28 architecture seats are yet to be allotted.
August 31 is the last date for students to report to the respective colleges.
Students who do not want the allotted seats should exercise choice four. If they fail to do so, their seats will be cancelled without any notice.