JOIN USBringing relief to students aspiring for seats in professional colleges, more number of seats were added to the CET seat matrix under government quota for this academic year.
There was much confusion over the number of seats uploaded on the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) website on Tuesday night, especially with the medical seats, which were shown only for 27 colleges. Students and parents were under a lot of stress coming to terms with the unexpected decrease in the number of seats.
The State government clarified on Thursday that the number of medical seats this year would be more than last year. In all, there will be 2,442 seats available for medicine this time. Last year, there were 2,221 seats. For engineering, there are 51,222 government quota seats available in all.
Since the colleges are being accorded permission in batches, seats are being added to the matrix bunch by bunch, which explains the variation in the number of seats displayed on the website, officials said. As and when the seats of a particular college are confirmed, KEA will add them to the list on the website.
A few seats may be added by the second round of counselling, according to the Higher Education and the Medical Education Ministers.
Speaking to the media on Thursday, Medical Education Minister Sharan Prakash Patil said, “As many as 416 seats have been added on Thursday. By night, 2,094 seats in all will be available in the matrix. In the next two or three days another 287 seats will be added. The final status of all available seats will be known by July 15.”
Patil said even last year, the counselling was held after July15. Hence, students and parents need not worry about the dates.
Further, three new medical colleges, including BGS Institute for Medical Sciences, Bangalore, Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESI) Institute of Medical College, Gulbarga, and Sridevi Medical College, Tumkur, will function from this year.
While BGS college figures in the current list of the Medical Council of India (MCI), the other two are yet to be included in the MCI list of MBBS colleges in Karnataka.
Online payment
Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande said that for the first time, students can make online payments for the courses and they will get their receipts within 10 minutes.
“This will add to the transparency and will help in quick confirmation of seats.”
Three new engineering colleges are coming up in the State this year. Also, three new programmes under architecture are being added. He allayed the fears of students, saying that the KEA had requested for extension of dates by Comed-K for surrendering seats.
As of now, the medical seats have to be surrendered between July 11 and 13 for Comed-K. Engineering seats have to be surrendered between July 13 and 17 and architecture seats on July 22 and 23. Request has also been made to the Comed-K officials to reschedule the dates of the second round of counselling, he added.
AYUSH admissions
Candidates seeking admissions for courses under Ayush department, including Ayurveda, Homeopathy and Unani, will have to wait a while longer for the admissions. According to Vijayakumar G, Director, Department of Ayush, the admissions for these courses commences only in August as the Central Council of Indian Medicine and Central Council for Homeopathy are yet to confirm the seat matrix. Last year, there were 995 seats under government quota for Indian Systems of Medicime and Homoeopathy.
The counselling for MBA course will begin on Friday. There are 236 management colleges and the government intake is 12,375 this year. Last year, 7,998 seats were allotted and 6150 seats remained vacant.
A total of 113 candidates from Karnataka took provisional allotments for Comed-K medical seats, whereas 21 have confirmed their choices. There are a total of 683 medical seats. Out of the total 744 BDS seats, only two from the State have confirmed their seats, whereas 70 have taken provisional allotments.
Candidates from Kerala were the largest contingent from outside the State. The Comed-K will begin counselling for engineering seats too on Friday.