CET aspirants in the crossfire

Students and parents have been unhappy to have received offers of leftover seats during the Casual Vacancy Round counselling, while institutions responsible for the mess—the AICTE and the colleges—indulged in a protracted blame game.

On Thursday, AICTE said colleges caused the confusion by providing wrong information about the seat allocation, despite having received prior information about the new online system programmed to formulate seat allocation based on information fed by colleges.

A senior AICTE official told Deccan Herald that colleges confused the approved intake with the existing or applied intake (of students) while submitting seat details, despite clarifications from AICTE.

Colleges, on the other hand, strongly refuted the allegation saying that the web-based system was malfunctioning.

“During the time allotted for us, colleges across the country tried to upload the information. Within a short span of time, the colleges had to provide information. The website was not able to handle the load, and was often not available to users,” said MR Doraiswamy, Chairman, PES Group of Institutions.

The Council has to regulate engineering and technical institutions in the country in terms of continuation of colleges, inclusion of courses, increase in intake of students and other issues before the start of the seat-selection process.

It had to withdraw seats it had allocated for some colleges, as they either had deficiencies or exceeded the allocated limit.

According to Council norms, colleges that are eight years or older will have 840 seats in all streams and all semesters. The figures for five-year-old colleges has been fixed as 540 while those less than five years can have 420. The seat withdrawal has been mainly targeted at the cases where colleges had exceeded their seat limit. In Karnataka, the AICTE had to cut down seats in three colleges after it found that they have exceeded their stipulated strength. 

The Council had even cancelled recognition for Godutai College in Gulbarga, putting the careers of 142 students selected through Karnataka Examination Authority in doubt.
Higher education department officials said alternative arrangements have been made to accommodate students.

However, a senior KEA official said no decision had been taken on the 140 students allocated to Godutai College before it was disapproved by AICTE.