Technical glitch mars maiden online CET counselling

Seat matrix was uploaded eight hours after scheduled start

The maiden online counselling for admission to undergraduate professional courses got off to an uncomfortable start on Thursday with hundreds of students failing to register because of heavy traffic.

Worse still, the seat matrix was uploaded on the website only in the afternoon, nearly eight hours after the scheduled time.

Under the new system, students have to register with a secret keyword given to them earlier, and enter options for courses and colleges.

The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) received the seat matrix from the State government only at 4 am, just two hours before students were to start entering options. The KEA had to collate the data before it could finally upload it on the website www.kea.kar.nic.in around 1.30 pm, well-placed sources said.

The delay in uploading the matrix meant that very few students could enter options between 6 am and early afternoon. Several students complained that the server was “very slow” and they could not register even after hours of effort.

Ananth Ram, ranked 668th, gave up registering at 9.30 am after many unsuccessful attempts. He could register only around 7.30 pm.

A student from Krupanidhi Pre-University College could not register even after several attempts. He first tried in the morning, then in the afternoon and again in the evening.
The chaos worsened when KEA uploaded the seat matrix.

As the traffic increased, the server slowed down. An unconfirmed source attributed the glitch to the failure of the government to purchase the security certificate from the vendor. Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), a widely-used communications protocol for secure communication over a computer network, was not procured and hence caused the glitch, the source claimed.

Rashmi V Mahesh, Executive Director, KEA, however, attributed the glitch to the “huge traffic”. Students were very “eager” and hence scrambled to register, she said.

According to her, the KEA’s software is sourced from the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The network and the server are with the State Data Centre. The traffic was just 50 per cent of the SDC’s capacity, Rashmi explained.

AICTE approval

Another college has been added to the list of engineering institutes which have not received the approval from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Malik Sandal Institute of Art and Architecture, Bijapur, which has 17 architecture seats under the government, has now joined the list that includes BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, BVB College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli, and St Joseph Engineering College (SJEC), Mangalore. These colleges have 1,356 seats under the government quota.

Dr Joseph Gonsalves, Principal, SJEC, however, claimed that the college had received the approval for the 2012-13 academic year.

“As per AICTE letter F No South-West/1-6866886705/2012/EOA dated May 10, 2012, the college has received the AICTE approval. Due to some minor technicality, this letter has not been received by the State government,”Dr Gonsalves said.

But Siddaiah, Principal Secretary, Higher Education, said that none of these colleges received the seat matrix. The new college started by Tadikela Subbaiah Trust, Shimoga, has not received the seat matrix from the Medical Council of India (MCI).

G S Venkatesh, in-charge director, medical education, said that he did not know why the college had not received the MCI nod.