ED seeks details on seat-blocking scam from Karnataka Examinations Authority

Bengaluru: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is exploring a money laundering angle in the undergraduate engineering seat-blocking scam reported in the seat allotment during 2024-25 academic year which was concluded recently.

In a communication to the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), the central agency has sought details of colleges, the number of seats, students and the total money transacted. According to sources, ED sought details based on the media reports about the seat scam.

Confirming the ED’s communication, KEA officials said that they have responded to the ED with a copy of the FIR. Speaking to DH, Prasanna H, Executive Director of KEA said, “We told them that the police are investigating the matter, and more details will be available with the investigators.” Prasanna even mentioned that KEA had responded with the copy of the FIR registered at the jurisdictional police.

As explained by Prasanna, when the case is under investigation, the KEA is not allowed to share any details of students and colleges involved. “Even if we provide them information it would be incomplete, because the investigating agency has already arrested some people and there are chances of police having more information about the case and getting information from the police will help ED to probe from its angle,” Prasanna added.

It can be recalled that this year KEA authorities have suspected fraudulent activities in the seat selection when hundreds of unfilled seats at few of the top colleges, in most sought-after streams were left unfilled, forcing the KEA to transfer such seats for management to fill at their level. Seats under management quota were sold between Rs60 lakh to 80 lakh this year for Computer Science and related courses.

Following the suspicion over students not reporting to the colleges despite seats being allotted at the top colleges, the KEA had issued notices to over 2000 such students seeking explanation through the e-mail address they have given along the registration and most of the e-mails bounced back.

Later authorities realised multiple registrations were made using the same Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and KEA issued notices using the residential addresses available in the documents submitted to KEA. Shocked with the reply by students claiming that their credentials were misused, KEA filed a police complaint and also requested to consider previous years admissions also for inquiry.