Gaffe by 'overworked' officials lands students in soup

They forgot to say Thursday's list of KEA seat allotment was tentative

Tremendous work pressure on the officials of the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has led to a costly slip.

For the past two days, students and parents have been at the KEA office seeking an explanation for an overnight variation in the second round of seat allotment list for professional courses put up by the Authority. Whether this would bring a sigh of relief to parents or cause concern about the state of affairs at the KEA, all the confusion was a result of fatigue on part of the officials, going by what the staff admitted.

Here is what triggered the furore: The KEA was expected to announce the results of the second round of seat allotment on Thursday, July 25. Duly, towards the evening, the said list was hosted on the official website. The KEA also sent out an official press release stating that they had hosted the second round of allotment list on their website.

However, students were not able to download their admission orders and there was much panic over the website not functioning effectively. On Friday, when the site did begin functioning properly, some of the students who had managed to get a glimpse of the list put up the day before, saw to their horror that the seats had slipped several notches down and the list put up on Friday evening was entirely different.

Some of them even had printouts of both the lists. The students seemed to have got a better deal in the list announced on Thursday, compared to the one uploaded later the next day. Indignant students and parents descended on the KEA office immediately demanding an explanation for the act.

Why two lists?

The officials hastened to explain that there was nothing fishy and everything was transparent. They reasoned that the list put up on Thursday was tentative. The same day, at 3.30 pm, was the deadline given by Comed-K to surrender the medical seats. More than 600 students wanted to surrender the Comed-K seats that day, but they were not able to take a decision, as the KEA had not yet given its list. The students’ first option was a seat under the government quota. Hence, the KEA decided to give them an indicative list on Thursday, so that they could make their choice. But the KEA had not mentioned that the list was indicative. Not even in the official release dispatched by them.

Administrative officer S P Kulkarni told Deccan Herald on Saturday that it was a mistake on the part of the officials. They forgot to mention that the list was tentative. “It was work pressure. We did not mention that it was a temporary list,” he said.

The result

Teary-eyed students waited in the KEA office seeking an explanation. Angry parents threatened to go to the court. Officials lost their temper. Students who were allotted seats under Super Numerary Quota on Thursday, saw their names under general merit the next day.

They now had to pay more fees. Those who had got better seats on the day before, had to now settle for their not preferred options. This was the case with hundreds of students. The case with those from rural areas was worse. Many were at sea as they were not able to understand the nuances of the procedure. Several said they could not read English. A few others said they did not have access to computers to update themselves of the information.

Anarchy

With no officials at the helm in KEA, there is chaos throughout the counselling. The poorly maintained KEA website is the root cause of all the miscommunication, students felt. The fact that Department of Pre-university Education director Chakravarthy Mohan has been transferred to another department in the midst of the counselling procedure has compounded the problem. On Saturday, even as the parents stood at the venue asking for clarifications, the lone administrative officer who was managing the entire show had vanished by afternoon. The few other deputed staff could barely handle the crowd and give them all the explanations.

No decision on third round

Candidates are still waiting for the government’s decision on the third round of counselling. An official in the Department of Higher Education said the matter was still being discussed. With July 29 being the last day for reporting to colleges based on the second round, and with July 31 being the deadline for admissions as per the Supreme Court's directions, the government is yet to announce how it would juggle the last round. The candidates, on the other hand, are completely in the dark.