KCET 2022: Karnataka HC tells KEA to follow technical committee suggestion on CET rankings

BENGALURU : The High Court of Karnataka has directed the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) to follow the formula suggested by a technical committee to redo Common Entrance Test rankings for this year. The formula will be applied to students who passed PU Second Year in 2020-21. A division bench of the High Court of Karnataka has directed the KEA to come up with the ranking list based on the suggestions made by a committee headed by DR B Thimme Gowda, Vice Chairman of the Karnataka State Higher Education Council.

The committee suggested: "The qualifying marks of 2021 PU batch students shall be deducted by an average of 6 marks in Physics, 5 marks in Chemistry and 7 marks in Mathematics, that results in total deduction of 6 marks for 100 qualifying marks." The KEA had submitted the proposal in a sealed envelope to a division bench headed by the Acting Chief Justice Alok Aradhe on Thursday. On Friday, the High Court directed the authorities to go ahead with the CET ranking based on this formula.

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A technical committee constituted by the State government has suggested an average deduction of six marks in each subject from PU-II marks of COVID-19 year (2020-21) students so that their CET rankings this year will be 'normalised' with 2021-22 batch PU-II students. The committee came up with two sets of solutions based on complex calculations. But in the end, it suggested deducting an average of 6 marks from 2020-21 students. It also suggested increasing "seats in IT related branches in colleges as per previous years preferred selection of seats may be increased by about 10 per cent."

The technical committee was constituted following a State government order on September 20. It constituted of Dr. B Thimme Gowda, Vice Chairman, Karnataka State Higher Education Council, Prof S A Kori, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Andhra Pradesh, N Ravichandran, Director, Technical Education, MRN Murthy, retired Dean of IISC, Bengaluru and Prof N Yathindra, Professor Emeritus at Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology. The HC disposed the appeal by the KEA against the September 3 order of a single-judge bench which quashed a note by the Authority issued on July 30. The note prescribed considering only CET marks for ranking 2020-21 students . For the students of 2021-22 batch, the II PU and CET marks were considered in 50:50 ratio for ranking.