KCET row: Karnataka High Court directs KEA to consider 50% PUC marks for repeaters 


KCET 2022: Giving its final verdict, the Karnataka High Court on Saturday allowed the petitions filed by the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET)  repeaters and directed the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) to consider their qualifying exam (QE) marks or the PUC marks for evaluating their CET rankings.

On August 2, the CET repeaters filed a petition in the Karnataka High Court, seeking consideration of 50 per cent of QE marks for CET rankings. 

However, the Karnataka Examination Authority on July 30 issued an order stating that only 100 per cent of CET marks will be considered for CET candidates of  2021 who appeared in 2022. This is because in 2021, the CET evaluation was based only on 100% CET scores as against the norm of 50% of QE or PUC/class 12 marks and 50% of CET score. 

The decision on considering only 100 per cent CET score arrived after the government promoted all the students of II PUC due to Covid-19 without conducting the examination and evaluating based on SSLC, first PU and internal assessment marks. 

But, Justice Krishna Kumar while hearing the petition quashed the notification passed by the KEA of considering only 100 per cent CET marks for repeaters. 

The KEA also argued that considering 50 per cent of QE marks for repeaters would do injustice to the CET freshers of 2022 and the CET candidates of 2021.

Around 25,000 CET candidates from 2021 repeated the CET in 2022 in order to better their rankings this year. Some students also took a drop to study for NEET 2022 and planned for CET as a backup option. The repeaters’ rank actually plummeted drastically despite scoring well in CET compared to the freshers. 

Parents and students also protested before the KEA office in Malleswaram, Bengaluru, demanding justice for the repeaters. 

Poornima MS, a parent, said, “This victory really means a lot for us. For the past one month my son Sinchan and my family couldn’t be ourselves with so much anxiety and tension clouding over us. My son is the only hope for our family and with such an absurd evaluation criteria of the KEA, his academics and career would become disastrous. The hard work for the last one year really paid off and I think with 50% of QE marks, my son’s ranking will be well under 15,000 or 10,000.”

 



Source link