Govt waives penalty clause for medical seat aspirants

In a big relief to thousands of medical seat aspirants holding on to engineering seats, the state government on Friday announced a waiver of the penalty clause for professional courses applicable only for the current academic year.

Keeping in mind the prolonged delay in holding NEET-UG counselling due to the pending petitions before the Supreme Court, Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan announced the government’s decision to waive off the clause. DH has reported in detail about the confusion on its 11 February’s edition.

Along with the penalty clause waiver, the minister also said that the fee, collected from students for engineering seats, will be refunded if they opt for medical seats. “We will be waiving off the penalty clause only for this academic year and the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has been instructed to refund the fee paid for engineering seats to the students if they opt for the medical seats,” Narayan clarified.

Had not for the waiver of the penalty clause, the students, who block engineering seats and surrender them after the casual vacancy round, should have paid six times the course fee as a penalty.

The government had introduced the clause to prevent seat blocking practice. During the 2020-2021 academic year 168 students had paid the penalty and the total penalty collected by the KEA was Rs 1.18 crore.

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