JOIN USHeads of erring colleges will face penal action: KEA
The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has threatened criminal action against college principals who admit students without verifying their original qualifying marks cards.
In a strong-worded letter to principals of engineering/medical/dental/Indian System of Medicine and Homoeopathy colleges, KEA Executive Director, Rashmi V Mahesh, stressed that original marks cards/records of students must be verified at the time of admission.
Not only that, colleges should also take possession of the documents before students are granted admission. Any violation, Rashmi warned, would result in possible initiation of criminal proceedings against the principal concerned.
“The KEA will request the Department of Higher Education/Medical Education to lodge a criminal complaint for breach of trust, cheating, etc with the jurisdictional police against the principal,” Rashmi stated. The KEA would not rest at that. It will also submit detailed reports against the colleges concerned to apex bodies such as the All India Council for Technical Education, the Medical Council of India, the Dental Council of India, the Council of Architecture, or the Central Council of Indian Medicine.
The letter comes after complaints that a few colleges admit students, who were allotted seats by KEA, without obtaining their original marks cards/records.
The KEA suspects that students do not submit the original marks cards because they have already given them to the custody of other colleges where they have secured admission. Simply put, such students take multiple seats — through KEA or outside of it. They block their KEA seats, retaining the non-KEA ones. Thus, they submit their marks cards only to colleges where they are likely to study.
Rashmi alleged there was a nexus between private colleges and such students to usurp government-quota seats. Once the students drop out of the college, their seats go to the management quota where they fetch a fortune. To be precise, colleges themselves do not insist on the original marks cards to enable students to secure admission elsewhere. The vacant seats thus are lapped by the management. “It (the practice) deprives other equally eligible meritorious students from getting subsidised government seats. It can happen only when college authorities and students are hand in glove,” Rashmi maintained.