Govt all set to divert Rs 260 crore from KEA

The state government is all set to divert the funds available with the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), by bringing amendments to the Karnataka Professional Education Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Determination of Fee) Act 2006.

Currently KEA is having around Rs 260 crore in its account and the government is trying hard for several years to divert that amount, and the exercise by the government still continued as state Higher Education Minister G T Devegowda said that there is no provision under the current rule to transfer money and that they will bring an amendment to the Act in the coming days.

Speaking about it after releasing the CET 2019 results on Saturday, Devegowda said, “We need to utilize this amount for the development of infrastructure at the government engineering colleges and we will bring an amendment to the Act in the upcoming Assembly session.”

It is not the first time that the government is eyeing on the KEA money, even when Basavaraj Rayareddy was was state higher education minister, he had communicated to the then KEA authorities asking them to transfer the amount to the state higher education department for the construction of new government engineering colleges.

There is an opposition from the KEA officials to transfer the money as it is collected from students. “KEA is an autonomous body and the government does not allocate funds. The entire institution is running by the money collected from the students in the form of examination/application fee for the entrance examinations to the various professional courses. And in recent days we even conducted other competitive examinations for various recruitments. This money belongs to students and it should be utilized for the students,” said a senior official of KEA, on condition of anonymity.

However, the officials of the state higher education department have their own version. “If the amount is not utilized, then it would receive objections from the Income Tax department. We have already experienced the same at the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) where they struggled hard to get back Rs 400 crore seized by the Income Tax department,” said the official.